Hey, it looks like the Octave port might not be mainained anymore (at least, Per -- the listed maintainer -- says he's not doing it anymore). I'd not been able to build the current version of octave (2.1.72) due to some byzantine C++ problems on my Intel Mac; however 2.1.73 seems to work better. I was able to build it (static only) with the following changes to the Portfile: --- Portfile.orig 2006-09-29 18:26:35.000000000 -0700 +++ Portfile 2006-09-30 09:57:59.000000000 -0700 @@ -2,8 +2,8 @@ PortSystem 1.0 name octave -version 2.1.72 -revision 5 +version 2.1.73 +revision 0 categories math science maintainers persquare@mac.com persquare@users.sourceforge.net platforms darwin @@ -20,10 +20,9 @@ master_sites ftp://ftp.octave.org/pub/octave/bleeding-edge/ use_bzip2 yes -checksums md5 47012ee5efee3a36d04fea3341748862 +checksums md5 c356475aa06d81a10f8bf27f1a1d27a0 -patchfiles patch-configure-gcc34argbug \ - patch-configure-casesensitivefs +patchfiles patch-configure-uglydefs depends_build bin:texinfo:texinfo \ bin:tex:teTeX @@ -85,9 +84,11 @@ configure.env-append CC="gcc-dp-4.2" configure.env-append CXX="g++-dp-4.2" configure.env-append F77="gfortran-dp-4.2" - configure.env-append FLIBS="-lgfortran" configure.args-append --with-blas="-framework Accelerate" + configure.args-delete --disable-static + configure.args-delete --enable-dl + configure.args-delete --enable-shared } default_variants +test My "patch-configure-uglydefs" files is as follows: diff -ur configure.orig configure --- configure.orig 2006-03-20 13:12:22.000000000 -0800 +++ configure 2006-09-19 10:39:59.000000000 -0700 @@ -21460,9 +21460,6 @@ case "$canonical_host_type" in - *-*-darwin*) - UGLY_DEFS=`echo $DEFS | sed 's,\\",\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ \\\\\\",g'` - ;; *) UGLY_DEFS=`echo $DEFS | sed 's,\\",\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\",g'` ;; The specific problem I had trying to build dynamic libraries was that liboctave.dylib and liboctinterp.dylib both defined the symbol ___dso_handle, and so therefore caused the build to croak when trying to link with both libraries. My "ports-fu" is not strong enough to know if these changes are right, but they seem to get me to a point where Octave would build and run. I suspect that I've left PPC and darwin < 8 builds on the floor. Anyway, thought I'd pass this along in case it's useful. chris