MacPorts 1.6 installation failure after Leopard hard drive replacement

[equipoise1@…]

I recently replaced a hard drive on my Core2Duo MacBook Pro. I had previously installed MacPorts on the old drive. After replacing the old drive and installing leopard, I had all of my Mac OS X user settings copied onto the new drive. I then installed Xcode and X11. Next I installed MacPorts on the new drive. Then I tried:

port variants octave

and

port install octave

This chugged away for a while but produced error msgs. The gist of these concerned Perl 5.8.8.something and the fact that /some/path/to/a2p is being used (is active?) by an earlier version of perl5. I've googled to some stuff about this, including the same error msg. This msg includes a suggestion about using the "-f" option.

Question 1: Where do I read about the "-f" option, which I believe pertains to the "port" command, and information explaining other options? An hour of googling on this has been largely unproductive. I've also been unable to bring up a man page on "port".

I believe these problems have to do with vestigial registry information from my earlier installation on the old drive. Now I'd like to revert my OS to where it stood after I installed it on the new drive but before I installed MacPorts. I'm concerned about losing things like gcc, which existed independent of what I've tried with MacPorts.

Question 2: How can I remove everything related to MacPorts, including anything that it did install, while not endangering things that would have been come with the Leopard and Xcode installation I did?

Question 3: Before removing things installed under MacPorts, is there a way to determine which of these components may be usable?

Question 4: When I've purged the old things, should I be able to reinstall MacPorts according to the instructions in the guide, or will some alternative approach be required?

Thanks.

[blb@…]

Replying to equipoise1@…:

This chugged away for a while but produced error msgs. The gist of these concerned Perl 5.8.8.something and the fact that /some/path/to/a2p is being used (is active?) by an earlier version of perl5. I've googled to some stuff about this, including the same error msg. This msg includes a suggestion about using the "-f" option.

This actually sounds like the perl5 vs. perl5.8 issue, see for example #17304.

Question 1: Where do I read about the "-f" option, which I believe pertains to the "port" command, and information explaining other options? An hour of googling on this has been largely unproductive. I've also been unable to bring up a man page on "port".

If 'man port' doesn't work, you can either follow the advice for updating MANPATH or by simply unsetting MANPATH entirely (the system is usually smart about determining the details).

I believe these problems have to do with vestigial registry information from my earlier installation on the old drive. Now I'd like to revert my OS to where it stood after I installed it on the new drive but before I installed MacPorts. I'm concerned about losing things like gcc, which existed independent of what I've tried with MacPorts.

Question 2: How can I remove everything related to MacPorts, including anything that it did install, while not endangering things that would have been come with the Leopard and Xcode installation I did?

That's covered in a FAQ entry though if the issue you're experiencing is simply the perl5 vs. perl5.8 problem, then you shouldn't have to do something so drastic.

Question 3: Before removing things installed under MacPorts, is there a way to determine which of these components may be usable?

Try 'port installed' which should show you everything it thinks is installed, and if it succeeds with a list you expect, everything should be usable.

Question 4: When I've purged the old things, should I be able to reinstall MacPorts according to the instructions in the guide, or will some alternative approach be required?

Once MacPorts is removed, installing again should be the same as the first-time install, or easier if you already dealt with the PATH and MANPATH issues.

[(none)]

Milestone Port Bugs deleted

[tobypeterson]

Doesn't appear to be a clear bug report here. Closing.