I'm coming in late to the discussion, but I decided to look into this.
It seems the -f switch doesn't take effect until after the current
statefile is checked. This runs contrary to the documentation of the -
f switch, but I'm not sure it's wrong. For example, if I have a port
caml-extlib installed, and I do `port -f extract caml-extlib`, it
will extract it anyway (the -f switch overrides the fact that the
port is installed, in this case). Then if I do `port -f configure
caml-extlib` it will avoid re-extracting it, since I already
extracted it, and it will move on to patching and configuring it.
This is potentially useful, because you can run steps in sequence
without re-doing the same work over and over.
I would suggest that the documentation of the -f switch be updated to
more accurately reflect what it does (makes it ignore the fact that
the port is already installed) without changing current behaviour. If
you want to re-run archive, you can either clean (and let it rebuild
- if you don't rebuild, re-archiving isn't particularly helpful) or
you can edit the stateful (yeah, ugly). For sake of argument, if the -
f switch behaved as documented then trying to re-run archive would re-
run all the previous steps anyway. If you think there's a valid
reason for saying "perform this step again", maybe a new switch could
be introduced that would edit the statefile and remove the given
target (and any subsequent targets) from it, so you could say `port --
i-really-mean-it archive caml-extlib` and it would forget the fact
that it had already run com.apple.archive (without forgetting any
previous steps).
On Dec 13, 2006, at 10:56 AM, Daniel J. Luke wrote:
On Dec 13, 2006, at 1:09 AM, Eric Angell wrote:
Done, sooner than expected.
http://trac.macports.org/projects/macports/ticket/11143
Ok, it looks like it's not just a bug with the archive target (like
I originally thought), but force doesn't override the state file
for other targets too.
If a base/ committer (or at least someone who has more familiarity
with base/ than I do) could comment, that would be appreciated. (I
can create a patch and test it, but it would be helpful for someone
to let me know if I'm going to break everything by changing
portutil.tcl and/or if I should look elsewhere).
Thanks for your help, despite my original tone.
--
Kevin Ballard
http://kevin.sb.org
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.tildesoft.com
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