On Mar 19, 2012, at 6:49 a.m., Freek Dijkstra wrote: > A suggestion -- would it be possible to provide virtual packages for > Apple-provided tools, like apple-perl, apple-python2, apple-subversion? > This sure may be a cause of problems, but perhaps its limited when these > dependencies would only be used for fetch and/or build dependencies? I'm > not suggestion to blindly accept all Apple packages. For example, a > package which says "just give me any Python version" or "any gcc-like > compiler is fine" is likely to run in problems soon. However, I do not > see a problem with a package that specifically asks "please provide > Python2.7" or "please provide gcc4.4 or llvm 3.0".
MacPorts currently has file dependencies[1], which allow ports to depend on the existence of a certain file rather than the presence of a MacPorts package. For example, as Ryan showed earlier, netpbm has a file dependency on the system Subversion if it's new enough: % port -v deps netpbm Full Name: netpbm @10.47.31_0 Fetch Dependencies: bin:svn:subversion Build Dependencies: path:bin/perl:perl5 Library Dependencies: port:zlib, port:jpeg, port:tiff, port:libpng, port:jasper, port:jbigkit, port:libxml2 This means that MacPorts will look for a binary called "svn" in the usual places before falling back to installing the subversion package. [1] http://guide.macports.org/#reference.dependencies.types vq _______________________________________________ macports-dev mailing list macports-dev@lists.macosforge.org http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/macports-dev