BUG: reinplace -E doesn't work with GNU sed (from gsed +with_default_names)

[vinc17@…]

The Portfile man page mentions "reinplace -E", which is used by the libxslt port at least. When sed from the coreutils port is installed (in /opt/local/bin, which is first in my $PATH), installing libxslt fails with:

Error: reinplace: sed: invalid option -- E

A fix could be to hard-code the path to BSD sed: /usr/bin/sed. But it would probably be better not to rely on non-POSIX features, in particular if Apple decides to use another version of sed in the future. Note that the BSD sed man page says:

     The -E, -a and -i options are non-standard FreeBSD extensions and may not
     be available on other operating systems.

[vinc17@…]

The fact that /opt/local/bin is in my $PATH, doesn't matter. So, I suppose that port uses a hard-coded $PATH with /opt/local/bin in it.

[afb@…]

coreutils doesn't have sed, does it ? and gsed installs at gsed, so I don't see the problem

[vinc17@…]

Yes, it's port gsed, and it is installed as sed too if the with_default_names variant is used.

[nox@…]

We should should hardcode it. sed -E uses POSIX-compliant regular expressions, see re_format(7).

[nox@…]

Oops. I've added it twice...

[afb@…]

It would be better if you autoconf'ed it as @SED@ and added it to MacPorts requirements.

Note: +with_default_names is rather dangerous, and will break a few other ports as well.

[afb@…]

I've added @SED@ and @SED_EXT@ in r29127, along with sed_command and sed_ext_flag.

Should now be able to auto-detect BSD sed (-E) and GNU sed (-r) flags, at least...

[vinc17@…]

Note: +with_default_names is rather dangerous, and will break a few other ports as well.

It should be clear that binaries installed by ports are first for the end user. If the end user prefers GNU utilities, he should be able to use them without needing any prefix. If a port relies on some non-POSIX feature or doesn't take care of a specific dependency (because it wants to use some extension) itself, then this is a bug.

Conversely, upstream sometimes assumes coreutils or couldn't test with BSD utilities; this can also break some ports...

BTW, +with_default_names could install default names into another directory, such as /opt/local/gnu/bin; the end user would just have to adjust his $PATH.

[afb@…]

cmdline set to use autoconf values, in r29441.

remaining to be tested is if the extended regexps actually work with GNU sed, if they don't there is not much to do but to require that BSD sed is configured.

but at least it should be using the full path now, Mac default being /usr/bin/sed

[afb@…]

Fixed, MacPorts 1.6.0.

[toby@…]

Milestone MacPorts base bugs deleted