There is documentation on the MacPorts manual pages about the build phases, but they have names that are different from what one sees at runtime. Some of the build phases in the documentation seem to correspond to a set of more than one of the following phases.

In the doc, one sees:

• Initialization phase
• Fetch phase
• Integrity checking phase
• Extract phase
• Patch phase
• Configuration phase
• Build phase
• Destroot phase
• Test phase
• Destroot phase.

These are the phases as reported when one actually installs a port:

• org.macports.main - initialization of the MacPorts system, parsing of the Portfile.
• org.macports.unarchive - if "archivemode" is enabled, binary archives of the requested port are searched for and used if found, skipping all the stages up to "destroot".
• org.macports.fetch - fetching of the sources.
• org.macports.checksum - validation of the fetched sources.
• org.macports.extract - extraction of the sources.
• org.macports.patch - application of listed patches.
• org.macports.configure - configuration of the sources.
• org.macports.build - build stage, where the product gets built.
• org.macports.destroot - sandbox installation of the product.
• org.macports.archive - if "archivemode" is enabled, a binary archive is created off of the products installed into the sandbox.
• org.macports.install - built product is moved from the sandbox into the depot installation location underneath ${prefix}/var/macports/software
• org.macports.activate - installed product is "activated" from the depot location into ${prefix} for regular usage.