[MacPorts] Migration modified

[Dave Yost]

Thanks.

The message below reminds me of a feature I think would be useful and might help with the problem he mentions: MacPorts could output a minimal list of ports which when installed would result in the same set of ports as currently installed, in other words a list of the ports upon which none of the others depend.

Yes the instructions were concise enough to put them in a script of my own, but it took me at least quite a bit of thinking and reflecting to get it down to a point where no support should be necessary. If the script gets an error somewhere along the way it stops, and the user has to solve the problem and then can run the rest of the commands by hand, as a group. And because it's a script and not a bunch of isolated commands, continuing on is a simple bit of editing and then copy paste into the command line.

Besides, as a general principle, a working script interspersed with comments is a far more usable way to show how to do something then a bunch of instructions for humans interspersed with shell commands. And it is manifestly testable and therefore more likely to be correct.

Dave

> On Dec 15, 2014, at 11:47 AM, Lawrence Velázquez <larryv at macports.org> wrote:
> 
> I've forwarded your messages to macports-dev. I don't know if you're on it already, but it would be best to have the conversation there, as a matter of public record.
> 
> vq
> 
>> Begin forwarded message:
>> 
>> From: René J.V. Bertin <rjvbertin at gmail.com>
>> To: macports-dev at lists.macosforge.org
>> Subject: Re: [MacPorts] Migration modified
>> Date: December 15, 2014 at 4:38:17 AM EST
>> 
>>> On Sunday December 14 2014 20:43:43 Dave Yost wrote:
>>> 
>>> Really, code to do a migration should be part of macports, IMO. Nothing like being able to start a command and walk away for a couple of hours and have it do everything without tweaking.
>> 
>> IIRC the was already a script that does the brunt of the work, OR the instructions were concise enough for me to have put them into a script of my own.
>> 
>> I haven't followed this thread, but what I do remember from my 10.6 -> 10.9 migration was that the instructions had given me a list of ports to (re)install that was too exhaustive and as a result introduced conflicts. I've had to prune it manually, and pretty much too.
>> 
>> Given that experience, I too would hesitate to put everything into a big script linked to a feature that will give the impression of being a catch-all solution. The author of the script would have to be prepared to provide support to everyone who ran into trouble because of a combination of installed ports with unforeseen complexities ...
>> 
>> For comparison: while theoretically possible, it's generally not advised to update an Ubuntu or Debian release by simply changing the repository definitions and letting apt figure things out.
>> 
>> R.
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>