> On May 17, 2016, at 5:15 PM, Clemens Lang <c...@macports.org> wrote: > > On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 10:58:56AM -0400, Nicolas Martin wrote: >> I have looked for real answers regarding this question through the >> mailing list, but did not really understand the purpose of these >> files. > > MacPorts always keeps a tarball of the files installed by a certain > port in this directory. This allows you to switch between installed > versions or between ports that would otherwise conflict without > re-installing them completely. port activate/port deactivate implement > this.
Is there a way to have MacPorts behave so as to completely reinstall a port if one needs to ? I would prefer to wait through the process of building and activating the port again if I need to, than to lose quite a lot of space with duplicated binaries I almost never have to activate again. > The rationale here is that after an update you can test the updated > version of a software for a while, and if you notice it causes problems > you can file a ticket and easily go back to the old version with a > simple > sudo port activate @oldversion I understand this, but if you never have to revert to an older version of a package, this is quite a waste of space. > > MacPorts used to keep these files in a directory and just hard-link them > into $prefix, but that (a) means modifications to files in $prefix > affect the supposed-to-be prinstine copy, and (b) isn't easy to download > as pre-built binary. For this reason, we switched to tarballs a while > back and now provide pre-built binaries for some of these tar balls. > >> I have almost 5Gb of archives (tbz2) in >> /opt/local/var/macports/software. > > You seem to have quite a few ports installed. My software directory is > 3.4G with 652 installed ports. Well clang and llvm occupies a whooping 1.2G by themselves alone. > >> I have already run the port uninstall inactive command, so from my >> understanding, what remains in this path is from currently active and >> used ports. > > Correct. > >> What I don’t understand, and does not seem to be clear from any posts >> I have read regarding the matter, is why should these archives be >> kept? > > If you delete those archives you can no longer deactivate and > re-activate a port. In addition to the use case above, this is also > helpful when one of the files installed by the port was corrupted for > some reason -- just de- and re-activate it. I suppose that if I were to manually delete those archives, MacPorts would not be so kind as to detect this and just start the build process over again, if he needs to ? Would it be safe then to have some of /opt/local/var/macports symlink-ed on an external hard drive ? I would only plug the drive if I need to activate/deactivate those old (and large) ports, but small ports would be stored on my main drive. Would MacPorts still function with such a setup ? Thanks, Nicolas _______________________________________________ macports-users mailing list macports-users@lists.macosforge.org https://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo/macports-users
