On Oct 18, 2007, at 10:43, John Doner wrote:

I tried to port wxmaxima; it failed because I already had maxima installed (/usr/local/bin/maxima). Now the obvious solution would be to also use macports to install maxima. In fact, I did try this a couple of months ago, only to see it fail because it could not install the dependency sbcl. At the time, I just gave up on macports, installed sbcl and then maxima from the source. This worked out fine. Probably, I can do the same with wxmaxima.

But I'd rather start using macports, if possible. What can be done, if anything, to circumvent the problem of dependencies where something has already been built independently of macports?

Move /usr/local aside first (e.g. rename it to /usr/local-off). MacPorts ports often do not play well in the presence of things in / usr/local. If you managed to install this software from source, then it must be possible to install it with MacPorts. If you find that the ports still do not install to your satisfaction, please report these problems to us and help us fix the portfiles so they work better.