> As Chris mentioned, ports use a compiler of their choosing, not of > yours.
Yeah, it takes time to let this paradigm change sink in. :-) > In fact, it takes the unusual and not-recommended step of completely > discarding MacPorts base's list of preferred compilers and > substituting its own list, which begins with MacPorts gcc6, so > that's the compiler it will use. Probably gcc6 was the latest > stable version when that list was last updated, so it would be > reasonable to add gcc7 and gcc8 to the list. Yes. I will do this. > The best solution would be to fix lilypond so that it builds with > clang, but that's something to be discussed with the developers of > lilypond. I'm listening :-) Unfortunately, my C++ capabilities are quite limited, and normally we do cross-compilation to create a lilypond binary for the Mac. Since our personal resources are very limited, there isn't a high priority to make lilypond compile with clang – of course we gladly accept patches. Fortunately, macports provides guile 1.8.8, since guile 2.2.x doesn't reliably work with lilypond (and vice versa). This is becoming a very serious issue since most GNU/Linux distributions have already dropped 1.8.8 or will do so in the very near future... >> * I'm missing the ability to say >> >> port select --set emacs emacs23 . > > If you install the emacs port, it will install /opt/local/bin/emacs; > assuming /opt/local/bin precedes /usr/bin in your PATH, as it will > by default after you install MacPorts, the emacs port's emacs binary > will be used instead of Lion's older emacs binary. Ah, I missed to type `hash -r'; I thought that, similar to gcc, macports doesn't provide an `emacs' alias. Now everything works fine. >> * It's impossible to guess the difference between the `emacs' and >> `emacs-app' port from the output of `port info'. [...] > > Please file bug reports against those ports if changes are needed. Will do. >> *Four* compilers are necessary for poppler? > > I agree this is highly undesirable. It seems to me like it should > be possible to significantly reduce that list, but I have not > analyzed the problem in depth. I think one part of the problem is that `libomp' is a separate package. Since recent versions of clang include it, the artificial splitting automatically introduces `clang-3.7' as a dependency, regardless which clang version gets installed... > Certainly, I think we have bugs in our compiler selection process. > Especially on systems older than OS X Mavericks, while installing > ports, you may see warnings to the effect that all compilers were > blacklisted, but the build succeeds anyway. Until now I haven't experienced this – but I guess I will see that soon... > An overhaul of the MacPorts base compiler selection process was > proposed here: > > https://github.com/macports/macports-base/pull/88 > > You might try recompiling MacPorts base from that PR to see if its > new compiler selection process results in any improvements for this > problem. Looks interesting. Hopefully, I find some time to test it! >> * Where can I get a concise and up-to-date description of >> portfiles? `portfiles.7' seems to be heavily out of date... > > What would you like to know? A list of all available variables/keywords, with a description. > If portfile.7 or the guide are out of date (and I have no doubt they > are), let us know in what ways (by filing bug reports) so that > someone can fix them, or you can fork our repositories, make the > needed changes and send pull requests. Will try to file reports. Werner