RFE: Prefetch mode of operation

[n8gray@…]

As a laptop user I have intermittant network connectivity. It would be very useful if I could fetch all the sources needed for building a port and its uninstalled dependencies *before* building anything. One way to do this would be with a 'recursive' flag to 'port fetch'. Another (better, IMHO) option would be to allow 'fetch-first' as a permanent mode of operation. I would prefer to work this way all the time anyway.

[mww@…]

adding this to your .bashrc will provide this feature right away (wether or not this feature will make it to port(1))

#--- fetch_deps() {

for i in port deps $1 | tr -d "\r" | grep -v ^${1}; do

port fetch $i & fetch_deps $i;

done

} #---

[pguyot (Paul Guyot)]

I personally would rather have something that fetches binaries while dependencies are being compiled. This requires some heavy work on the dependency engine, though.

[mww@…]

Paul, this is easy, too #--- port_install() {

port install $* & for i in port deps $1 | tr -d "\r" | grep -v ^${1}; do

port fetch $i & fetch_deps $i;

done

} #---

[francisga@…]

Make -R work with 'port fetch'. Applied against version 1.320.

[francisga@…]

Updates the man page for the -R switch.

[francisga@…]

I have attached a 20-line patch to port.tcl against MacPorts 1.320 that that makes the -R switch work with the fetch stage.

port -R fetch somepackage

will fetch everything needed to build and run somepackage, so that a later port install somepackage will work even if offline.

I originally posted the patch to Ticket #11446, without realizing it was a dup of this ticket.

[raimue (Rainer Müller)]

Don't use the -R switch, as it is already used for following dependents (not dependencies; some fun with english).

I propose to use -r, which could also be used on other actions. -r follow dependencies (e.g. on fetch) -R follow dependents (e.g. on upgrade)

Whereas -n is the opposite of -r.

This would be much more consistent than using -R for this.

[raimue (Rainer Müller)]

To be consistent with other commands, we should use port fetch --follow-deps for this.

[mroman@…]

In general prefetching should be started in one thread and the another one should start building as soon as fetching of any source is completed. Just like it is implemented in portage for instance. It would be nice to see it in 1.8 release.

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

As of MacPorts 1.9, it's now easy to fetch all of a port foo's dependencies recursively:

sudo port fetch rdepof:foo