On 23.10.25 23:00, Ryan Carsten Schmidt wrote:
On Oct 23, 2025, at 15:57, joerg van den hoff wrote:
On 23.10.25 22:34, Ryan Carsten Schmidt wrote:
On Oct 23, 2025, at 15:27, joerg van den hoff wrote:
I seem to have an issue with groff 1.23.0 partly not correctly justifying my own man
macro formatted documents. but at some point in the recent past I seemingly "cleaned
up" and lost access to previously installed versions in macports so I no longer
simply can activate an older version. question:
most frictionless way to get 1.22.4 installed in my macports tree again (I can
either remove 1.23.0 or deactivate it, no matter) and to lock that installation
for the time being (so that it is not accidentally updated in the next port
upgrade outdated run)?
https://trac.macports.org/wiki/howto/InstallingOlderPort
ah thanks for the link!
I've tried to follow that prescription: it seems in may case (going back to
last checkin before groff.1.23.0) I thus need to do
git clone --single-branch https://github.com/macports/macports-ports.git
$ cd macports-ports
git checkout b4da402b979728e1b4cafab278f0c38a2a8ee3d3
(which I did from some not-special subfolder (freely reachable for macports
user) in my home dir. this leads to
"You are in 'detached HEAD' state."
I am definitely not a git user but I know that this usually is bad. question: I
guess for just working with that checkout it is innocuous?
proceeding I did
cd sysutils/groff
sudo port install
which throws this error:
Error: Failed to open statefile for groff: Could not open file:
/Users/{myusername}/software/macports-ports/sysutils/groff/Portfile
Error: Follow https://guide.macports.org/#project.tickets if you believe there
is a bug.
Error: Processing of port groff failed
what am I missing/doing wrong?
The macports user can't access your home directory maybe. Try putting that git
clone outside of your home directory, or change the permissions of your home
directory to allow other users to see inside it.
thanks a lot for fast reply, really appreciated. actually, I just had a look: after the git clone it
seems that all files have permission "rwx------" so that explains the primary issue. probably my
fault: actually the folder where I issued the git-clone had drwx------ in the first place. I do not
know whether that makes git-clone use those permissions? I have changed them now for the whole
cloned macports tree (and discovered that "chmod -R g=u ." can do that by just copying over user
permissions to group :)).
and now it has worked like a charm. very nice!
thanks again
joerg
ps: I now see different issues with text justifying in terminal output with groff 1.22.4 -- there
really seems something askew these last years with groff I gather -- but must have a closer look.
