Removed features
This is a record of notable pieces of code that have been remove from MacPorts over the years due to disuse. It exists for historical interest and just in case bringing any of them back becomes desirable.
rpm and deb packages
r123004 (unreleased, planned to be released in MacPorts 2.4.0)
This leaves pkg and mpkg packages. As the pkg and mpkg package formats are proprietary, and the rpm and deb packages are free and open, this might be a candidate for one of those cases mentioned above where bringing them back could be desirable, although it would require someone to put forth the extra maintenance effort required...
rpm-vercomp
function
r123005 (unreleased, planned to be released in MacPorts 2.4.0)
rpm-vercomp
was renamed tovercmp
years ago in r82291.
Building against a custom installation of Tcl
r117621, r117623 (released in MacPorts 2.3.0)
This was because MacPorts now installs its own copy of Tcl instead. MacPorts now controls its Tcl installation, as well as all the other Tcl packages that it needs. Specifically, this involved removing the following configure flags:
--with-tcl
--with-tclinclude
--with-tclpackage
--with-tcl-sqlite3=DIR
--with-included-tclthread
Remote indices
r109659 (Released in MacPorts 2.3.0)
- Remote SQL index via mports:// source type
- Remote PortIndex fetched via http or ftp
- Generation of port archives containing only Portfile and files/ dir for use with remote index
xpkg archive type
r105002 (Released in MacPorts 2.2.0)
The xpkg type was a xar-based format with xml. The support for it had never been quite as strong as some of the other formats...
submit target
r103400 (Released in MacPorts 2.2.0)
- generation of 'portpkg' containing Portfile, files/ and metadata
- 'submit' target that uploads portpkg to a server, allowing users to submit new ports
- associated server code
flat registry support
r77681, r79070, r79444, r106615 (the first of those was released in MacPorts 2.0.0, the rest were not mentioned in the ChangeLog...)
The flat registry code itself was not removed in these commits since it was still needed to convert existing flat registries to sqlite, but all the other code that enabled use of the flat registry was removed.
direct mode
r77511 (Released in MacPorts 2.0.0)
Option to install files directly into their final location without having a port image. Deactivation of ports without uninstalling was thus not possible in this mode. The commit contains a lot more changes than just removing this feature since its primary purpose was to switch to using archives for port images.
use of include
statements in Portfiles
r68206 (Released in MacPorts 1.9.0)
Ports can still include PortGroups with the
PortGroup
statement though.
bundled copy of sqlite3
r64358, r64363 (Released in MacPorts 1.9.0)
It was outdated, and from a time before MacPorts had its current architecture for including bundled copies of software it needs (like Tcl).
support for OS X Panther (10.3)
(no specific revision, part of the MacPorts 1.8.0 release)
Support for previous versions of OS X (e.g. Jaguar) seems to have been dropped before that sort of thing started being recorded in the ChangeLog, and no versions of OS X have been dropped entirely (as in, stopped working completely) since Panther.
universal_sysroot
and universal_target
conf options
r52324 (Released in MacPorts 1.8.0)
They are now handled automatically.
-i
option for port
command
r48218 (Released in MacPorts 1.8.0)
It was redundant, because the
port
command by itself with no further arguments will drop you into interactive mode anyways.
--pretend
option for port selfupdate
r48125 (Released in MacPorts 1.8.0)
Replaced by the global "dry-run" option (i.e. "
-y
")
the "base/config/mp_version" file
r32353 (Released in MacPorts 1.7.0)
This information is now stored internally in MacPorts, and can be retrieved with the
port version
command.
Presence of LD_PREBIND
& LD_PREBIND_ALLOW_OVERLAP
environment variables in MacPorts build environment
r31786 (Released in MacPorts 1.6.0)
These variables caused issues such as #13436
configure.macosx_deployment_target
r30396 (Released in MacPorts 1.6.0)
Replaced by the global
macosx_deployment_target
.
OpenDarwin mirrors
r26903 (Released in MacPorts 1.5.1)
The OpenDarwin project no longer exists, and neither does its website or mirrors.
use of xar
in the building of MacPorts
r24107, r24108, r24913 (first two released in MacPorts 1.4.2, third one released in MacPorts 1.4.41)
xar
had difficulty building some places, so it was dropped as a requirement, and then later also dropped from being bundled.
configure
switch for launchd support
r24107, r24108, r24151 (first two released in MacPorts 1.4.2, third one released in MacPorts 1.4.3)
MacPorts now always builds with launchd support when available.
compatibility upgrade for old conf files
r24106, r27618 (the first one released in MacPorts 1.4.2, the second one released in MacPorts 1.5.1)
The first one was originally for migrating from darwinports 1.1 to 1.2, and by 1.4.2 MacPorts had already moved on. The second one was also due to leftovers from darwinports.