port new actions: active, inactive

[anddam (Andrea D'Amore)]

I find it useful to list only inactive ports so I added two actions for active and inactive, they are NOARGS and actually resolve to a call to action_echo.

I'm adding the bash completion diff patch as well.

[jmroot (Joshua Root)]

People get confused enough about the difference between pseudo-ports and actions already. I don't think there is sufficient value in adding more actions just so you can avoid typing "echo".

[anddam (Andrea D'Amore)]

Avoiding adding new actions isn't the right way to address the problem with people getting confused.

We should rather clarify instruction by writing a better section in man page or a more evident "Macports Primer" in homepage.

I seem to recall other methods that could just left to echo, outdated is first one coming to mind.

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

But that's just it: the outdated action is not the same as the echo action. "port outdated" (which is a shortcut for "port outdated outdated") does not produce the same output as "port echo outdated".

You're suggesting we provide a shortcut for "port echo active", but it's just as likely that I'd want to see the output of "port installed active" instead. I don't think it makes sense to add a shortcut for one and not the other.

Remember also that we can now use the shortest unambiguous name for a command, so I can type "port ac" to activate a port:

$ sudo port ac vobcopy @1.2.0_0+universal
--->  Computing dependencies for vobcopy
--->  Deactivating vobcopy @1.2.0_1+universal
--->  Activating vobcopy @1.2.0_0+universal
--->  Cleaning vobcopy

With your patch, this case would no longer work; I would instead get:

$ sudo port ac vobcopy @1.2.0_0+universal
Ambiguous action "ac": could be any of {activate active}.

So for all these reasons I agree with jmr that we should not implement this suggestion.

If we were to implement the suggestion, remember that we have a third pseudo-port: actinact, which shows ports which have both an active and at least one inactive version installed.

[anddam (Andrea D'Amore)]

Replying to ryandesign@…:

But that's just it: the outdated action is not the same as the echo action. "port outdated" (which is a shortcut for "port outdated outdated") does not produce the same output as "port echo outdated".

Would you like it more if I copy behavior from "installed" action for an "inactive" action instead?

That is the action would accept a list of port.

[mkae (Marko Käning)]

Cc Me!

[anddam (Andrea D'Amore)]

Closed as invalid.