rpm54 @5.4.15 should move away from using xar-devel

[aszostak-partner-eso-org]

The project for the xar tool appears to be abandoned under: ​https://code.google.com/archive/p/xar/ The xar-devel port that rpm54 depends on does not build or install at the moment. I believe there is a system provided alternative currently on the OSX platform. Is it not better to move away from the abandoned xar implementation to the system one?

[mf2k (Frank Schima)]

In the future, please Cc the port maintainers (port info --maintainers rpm54), if any.

[mf2k (Frank Schima)]

See #51675.

[afb@…]

It is "illegal" to use system libraries in MacPorts, so that would probably mean packaging ​http://opensource.apple.com/source/xar/ as a port. But since noone is using the xar format anyway, might as well stick with the old rpm format ? Especially if the xar project has died (even more).

Then again the "alive" project also failed to release 1.6.0 (thus the use of "xar-devel"), so there's not *that* much difference from Google Code. It has already been removed from Debian, for failing to maintain and secure itself: ​https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=574023

[dbevans (David B. Evans)]

It appears that a copy of the old xar googlecode svn repo was cloned to github including a 1.6.1 release. Perhaps port xar could be updated using this source and dispense with xar-devel altogether?

New homepage ​http://mackyle.github.io/xar/
New github repo ​https://github.com/mackyle/xar

[kurthindenburg (Kurt Hindenburg)]

In db7e7aa85dce9427131f9ea2cc3a549bfb7849d0/macports-ports:

rpm54: change to use xar; add missing deps; add patch to allow building

Note it seems that a lot of commands abend/core dump - it seems that
rpm4 also does not work on some commands. Add conflict with rpm and
enable tests (2 aborts/failures).

I attempted to upgrade this port to the 2016 and 2017 versions without
any success.

maintainer timeout

closes #54776
closes #51676