port goes berserk uninstalling

[yaseppochi (Stephen J. Turnbull)]

port 2.0.99
Mac OS X 10.5.8
MacBook Pro Intel Core Duo

Why does uninstalling four py25-* ports (I no longer have python 2.5 installed and I've been gradually getting rid of its dependents) nuke all sorts of apps and even some Perl ports? Note that eventually we run into a dependency and can't uninstall some stuff. Something is seriously wrong here! I don't actually care about any of the uninstalled ports (any more), as this system is quite old and I don't use it for state-of-the-art stuff any more. But acl2, gnupg2, and aquaterm were all installed voluntarily, not as dependencies of some port in that list.

wideload:src/MacPorts 21:09$ sudo port -u uninstall py25-{numpy,nose,cairo,gtk}   
Password:
--->  Deactivating py25-gtk @2.22.0_1
--->  Uninstalling py25-gtk @2.22.0_1
--->  Deactivating py25-cairo @1.8.2_1
--->  Uninstalling py25-cairo @1.8.2_1
--->  Deactivating py25-numpy @1.6.1_1+atlas+gcc44
--->  Cleaning py25-numpy
--->  Uninstalling py25-numpy @1.6.1_1+atlas+gcc44
--->  Cleaning py25-numpy
--->  Deactivating py25-nose @1.1.2_1
--->  Cleaning py25-nose
--->  Uninstalling py25-nose @1.1.2_1
--->  Cleaning py25-nose
--->  Uninstalling acl2 @3.2_0
--->  Uninstalling acl2 @3.4_0
--->  Uninstalling aquaterm @1.0.1_4
--->  Uninstalling giflib @4.1.6_0
--->  Uninstalling gnupg2 @2.0.12_0
--->  Uninstalling octave @3.2.4_3+atlas+gcc43
--->  Uninstalling hdf5 @1.6.9_0
--->  Uninstalling hs-hashed-storage @0.4.11_1
--->  Uninstalling hs-HTTP @4000.0.9_0
--->  Uninstalling lzmautils @4.32.7_0
--->  Uninstalling p5-error @0.17016_1
--->  Uninstalling p5-locale-gettext @1.05_5
--->  Uninstalling p5-xml-simple @2.18_1
--->  Uninstalling p5-xml-sax-expat @0.40_2
--->  Uninstalling p5-xml-sax @0.96_2
--->  Uninstalling p5-xml-namespacesupport @1.11_2
--->  Uninstalling p5-xml-parser @2.40_1
--->  Uninstalling py25-bz2 @2.5.4_0
--->  Uninstalling py25-curses @2.5.4_1
--->  Uninstalling py25-hashlib @2.5.4_0
--->  Unable to uninstall py25-setuptools @0.6c11_0, the following ports depend on it:
--->  	py25-lxml @2.2.2_0
Error: port uninstall failed: Please uninstall the ports that depend on py25-setuptools first.

[mf2k (Frank Schima)]

There's no bug here. You used the -u flag which means to also uninstall inactive ports such as the old versions of acl2 that you had installed but not active because they were updated. Eventually it hit "py25-setuptools" and it could not be uninstalled because py25-lxml is active and depends on it. Follow-up to the ​Macports-Users mailing list if you have further questions about this.