MacPorts 1.6 still supports OS X 10.3 Panther?

[Boey Maun Suang]

Hi Chris and js (and anybody else who wants to help squash this apparent
Panther bug),

Thanks for your kind offers to help with reproducing the bug that I was
getting on Panther.  In order to reproduce it, you'll need to apply a
couple of patches to the MacPorts 1.6.0 source, then build and install
from that source.  If you want to remove it at any stage, just erasing the
/opt/local directory should be fine, as the bug that I'd like reproduced
prevents the installation of ports.

The steps to take appear below (apologies if they are more detailed that
you need); steps 1, 4, 5 and 7 are the same as the normal steps for
installing MacPorts from source [1].

 1. Download the MacPorts 1.6.0 source tarball [2].

 2. Download changesets 32105 [3] and 32212 [4]; they should save with the
respective filenames of changeset_r32105.diff and changeset_r32212.diff.
If your browser shows the text of those changesets instead of saving them
as files (Safari 3 does so for me), use your "Save As..." or equivalent
function from the File menu to save them with the above filenames.

 3. Place all three files into the same directory (wherever you'll be
happy to extract the source tarball).

 4. Extract the MacPorts 1.6.0 source tarball at the command line by
changing to the directory containing the tarball, then running

    tar -xjf MacPorts-1.6.0.tar.bz2

 5. Change into the MacPorts-1.6.0 directory ("cd MacPorts-1.6.0")
containing the extracted MacPorts source.

 6. Patch the extracted source by running

    patch -p3 < ../changeset_r32105.diff ; patch -p3 <
../changeset_r32212.diff

    If patch reports that either of these steps failed (it will say
"FAILED" in capital letters), stop and let me know as the following
steps won't work.

 7. Run "./configure", "make" and "sudo make install" as normal [1].

 8. If you haven't set your shell variables, do so at this point.  If you
use bash, follow the guide [5].  If you use tcsh (which I believe is the
default on Panther), then running

    setenv PATH /opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$(PATH)

    at the command line should be sufficient.

 9. Run "sudo port selfupdate" as normal [6].

 10. At the command line, you should now find that, when run on any
portname (e.g. xmlcatmgr) the "port info <portname>" and "port install
<portname>" commands fail with

     Error: Unable to open port: invalid command name "ui_channels"

     However, you should find that "port search <portname>" works fine. 
(In general, it appears to me that the port commands that fail with
the above message are the ones for which the "port" command attempts
to open a Portfile.)

Thank you once again for offering to help; I hope that your help will
enable us to get MacPorts 1.6.0 working on Panther very soon!  Please feel
free to ask me any other questions you may have in this regard.

Kind regards,


Maun Suang

[1] http://guide.macports.org/#installing.source
[2]
http://svn.macports.org/repository/macports/downloads/MacPorts-1.6.0/MacPorts-1.6.0.tar.bz2
[3]
http://trac.macports.org/projects/macports/changeset/32105?format=diff&new=32105
[4]
http://trac.macports.org/projects/macports/changeset/32212?format=diff&new=32212
[5] http://guide.macports.org/#installing.shell
[6] http://guide.macports.org/#installing.selfupdate

-- 
Boey Maun Suang
Email: boeyms at macports.org