DMG MacPorts-1.8.0 10.6 Snowleopard.dmg - MacPorts1.8.0 pkg - fails immediately

[magill@…]

Pkg install fails immediately (in introduction step) on Snow Leopard 10.6.1 with message: "MacPorts-1.8.0 Can't be installed on this computer

The specified message could not be found for the index 17."

• iMac6,1 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.16ghz; 3gb

[Note also: the opening splash screen in the installer is completely obscured by Apple's warning message panel "This package will run a program to determne if the software can be installed".]

[blb@…]

From where did you download the DMG and what was the full filename of it?

[jmroot (Joshua Root)]

You're installing the wrong package for your OS version (or trying to install over a MacPorts/DarwinPorts version older than 1.5).

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

William sent this reply by email:

Replying to blb@…:

From where did you download the DMG and what was the full filename of it?

Downloaded from the Macports "installing MacPorts" page...

​http://www.macports.org/install.php

“dmg” disk images for Snow Leopard,

link = "MacPorts-1.8.0-10.6-SnowLeopard.dmg"

re-installed xcode from Snow Leopard DVD and repeated the attempt

The OS version seems to have gotten lost in the bug ticket....

This is with 10.6.1

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

William sent this reply by email:

Replying to jmr@…:

You're installing the wrong package for your OS version (or trying to install over a MacPorts/DarwinPorts version older than 1.5).

I am trying to install the "latest" (per the MacPorts webpage) version of MacPorts -- 1.8 -- for Snow Leopard.

Granted, Snow Leopard is version 10.6 while I'm trying to install on 10.6.1. Will 1.8 install on 10.6.1?

There has been no version of either DarwinPorts nor MacPorts installed on this machine.

What is this "pre-installation" program looking for?

The error message is not provided --- but missing according to the program itself.

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

Replying to magill@…:

[Note also: the opening splash screen in the installer is completely obscured by Apple's warning message panel "This package will run a program to determne if the software can be installed".]

...and then you click the Continue button, and can read the splash screen, right? I don't know what we could do to fix that. Apple has written Installer to produce that warning message when an installer package wants to run a program, as a security precaution. Many installer packages need to run programs to see if they can run. If you don't like where or how the warning is shown, you should file a bug with Apple.

Replying to magill@…:

Granted, Snow Leopard is version 10.6 while I'm trying to install on 10.6.1. Will 1.8 install on 10.6.1?

I don't see why it wouldn't.

What is this "pre-installation" program looking for?

This​ is the pre-installation program. It checks that the version of MacPorts you downloaded is correct for the version of Mac OS X you have. If it isn't, message 16 is shown, which tells you what OS version the downloaded version of MacPorts was meant for. Then it checks if you are upgrading from a very old version of MacPorts. The code to upgrade very old versions of MacPorts has been removed from MacPorts, so if you have a very old MacPorts, message 17 is shown, which tells you to install MacPorts 1.7.1 first, then the current version.

The error message is not provided --- but missing according to the program itself.

The messages are stored in this​ file. As you see it defines messages for indexes 16 and 17 so I don't know why it tells you it can't find the message for index 17, nor why it wants to display message 17 if you don't in fact have an old MacPorts installation. Does the file /opt/local/etc/ports/dp_version exist on your system? If so, what's in it?

[blb@…]

Replying to ryandesign@…:

...and then you click the Continue button, and can read the splash screen, right? I don't know what we could do to fix that. Apple has written Installer to produce that warning message when an installer package wants to run a program, as a security precaution. Many installer packages need to run programs to see if they can run. If you don't like where or how the warning is shown, you should file a bug with Apple.

Now that we've dropped 10.3 support, future packages can use a different method to enforce which OS version is allowed by the package (see #13141). When we use that method, it won't drop that sheet down to warn about running a script.

The messages are stored in this​ file. As you see it defines messages for indexes 16 and 17 so I don't know why it tells you it can't find the message for index 17, nor why it wants to display message 17 if you don't in fact have an old MacPorts installation. Does the file /opt/local/etc/ports/dp_version exist on your system? If so, what's in it?

It was a missing semicolon, which jmr fixed in r56448. I believe he manually fixed that for the 10.4 and 10.5 packages but was missed for the 10.6 one.

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

Replying to blb@…:

It was a missing semicolon, which jmr fixed in r56448. I believe he manually fixed that for the 10.4 and 10.5 packages but was missed for the 10.6 one.

Ah yes, that is it. I see r56488 has already been merged to the 1.8 branch so this will be fixed in 1.8.1. I added it to the ChangeLog.

So, William, that just leaves the question of why the installer thinks you have an old MacPorts install.

[blb@…]

The test is pretty simple, if the file /opt/local/etc/ports/dp_version exists, it thinks an old version of MacPorts is installed. If it isn't wanted, then the simplest thing is to ​remove the old stuff then install. Otherwise, see the Migration page since this is on a 10.6 machine.

[magill@…]

Aha... ok, finally found the culprit. There was a remnant of Darwin Ports ... a partial /opt directory probably from a restore at some time. (This was a new box starting out with a factory install of Leopard last year). For some strange reason, the only thing there was /opt/etc. At any rate, I simply deleted the entire /opt tree and the installation want as expected.

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

Ok, great. Then we'll call this one resolved!