Hi,

> On 18. Jan 2026, at 23:48, Fred Wright <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> 
> On Sun, 18 Jan 2026, Clemens Lang wrote:
>> 
>> WARNING: This option is harmful to upgrade and should be avoided at all 
>> cost. Often, MacPorts ports are only upgraded to rebuild them against 
>> updated dependencies. Specifying this flag will cause a spurious rebuild if 
>> a dependency of a port fails to build and leave your system in a broken 
>> state once the dependent port is fixed.
> 
> Using `port upgrade outdated` without `-p` is essentially useless on older 
> platforms due to all the broken ports.

You get to keep the pieces, then. Good luck.


> Not using `-p` is also problematic because it even avoids upgrading ports 
> that *don't* depend on the failed ones, stopping on *any* failure.

That can be avoided by using `and not \( $failingport rdependentof:$failingport 
\)` or similar on the `port upgrade outdated` command line.


> Another issue with `-p` is that the final exit status is based on whether the 
> *last* operation failed, rather than whether *any* operation failed.

-p is dangerous, its use is discouraged, and it *will* leave you with a broken 
system. I’m not sure the exit status when using -p being wrong is even worth 
fixing given that it should really not be used in the first place.


-- 
Clemens

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