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How to run MacPorts from the subversion trunk

• Audience: Anyone who wants to test the latest features or not wait for an official release
• Requires: Subversion (easy with 10.5, tricky with 10.4 since that creates a circular dependency)

Introduction

There are times when some may want to run MacPorts from a version newer than the current stable release. Maybe there's a new feature that you'd like to use, or it fixes an issue you've encountered, or you just like to be on the cutting edge. This explains how to run completely from trunk, using only subversion to keep MacPorts up to date.

Installation

Step 1: Checkout MacPorts trunk

Pick a location to store MacPorts; for this HOWTO /opt/mports will be used (change to suit); run

cd /opt/mports
svn co http://svn.macports.org/repository/macports/trunk

which will create /opt/mports/trunk containing everything needed for MacPorts.

Step 2: Build and Install MacPorts

Build and install MacPorts with:

cd /opt/mports/trunk/base
./configure
make
sudo make install
make distclean

This will configure, build, and install MacPorts to the standard /opt/local location.

Configuration

Step 3: Configure MacPorts to use port information from subversion

Open /opt/local/etc/macports/sources.conf in a text editor. Change the last line which should look like

rsync://rsync.macports.org/release/ports/

to point to the stuff you already checked out:

file:///opt/mports/trunk/dports

Now MacPorts will look in the subversion checkout for port information.

Step 4: Update PATH

Edit your .profile (or .tshrc, or whatever is appropriate for you) to put /opt/local/bin in your PATH (and don't forget, if using bash, to export PATH too). Whether you put this at the beginning or end of the PATH is your choice.

More detailed instructions are in ​The MacPorts Guide

Keeping Up to Date

Subersion update

The official release of MacPorts has two commands sync and selfupdate to update all the port information (sync) and to update the base MacPorts installation when necessary (selfupdate). Instead of using these, update the subversion files:

cd /opt/mports/trunk
svn update

does what port sync would do. You do need to update the base install manually however, when and/or if needed, with the same commands listed in step 2 above.

Using MacPorts

At this point, most things should work like they do for anyone else; you will encounter some newer functionality that hasn't found its way to a release yet, and occasionally a bug. If so, be sure to ​report the bug when it happens.

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