Request: download-friendly installer package URLs

[george@…]

Hello!

I was writing a puppet class to install things from macports. In the process, I wrote a class for macports itself. I was unsure what to put in the source part, though.

I mean, I could hardwire it to the URL of the current installer as to date, but that does nobody any favours.

I was wondering if you could please add download-friendly URLs for the installer, on the website. For example

​https://distfiles.macports.org/MacPorts/MacPorts-current-Lion.pkg or

​https://distfiles.macports.org/MacPorts/MacPorts-current-MountainLion.pkg or

​https://distfiles.macports.org/MacPorts/MacPorts-current-Maverics.pkg

where current is the most up-to-date version of the MacPorts installer.

That would def add a sprinkle of automation more in my life.

Should higher intervention be needed, I am def willing to splurge for $beverage/$food -ofchoice to help the good people in Apple feel favourably towards this ticket.

Best Regads,

George Marselis

[Ionic (Mihai Moldovan)]

Cc Me!

[jmroot (Joshua Root)]

Do you really need symlinks or is having the current version available somewhere sufficient? Because the version is stored in rsync://rsync.macports.org/release/base/config/macports_version as well as being listed on the homepage.

Also, is installing a different version depending on when you happened to install really the behaviour you want? That’s something we try hard to avoid in MacPorts.

[george@…]

Do you really need symlinks or is having the current version available somewhere sufficient? Because the version is stored in rsync://rsync.macports.org/release/base/config/macports_version as well as being listed on the homepage.

Imho, implementation of the request is something the macports team and whoever is maintaining the site will have to decide. I can pitch in my 2 Saudi halala, but at the end of the day it is something you guys will have to be comfortable maintaining.

Also, is installing a different version depending on when you happened to install really the behaviour you want? That’s something we try hard to avoid in MacPorts.

We are talking about the macports installer version, given a certain major level of MacOSX, correct? Is it not the first thing a user does after installation of macports is selfupdate? That means that macports will always be updated, no matter what. In fact, I am scheduling macports to selfupdate; upgrade outdated every night at 2am. If we are talking about the version of a certain port, no problem: Ports that I need to pin, I just tell puppet to ensure they are at a certain version.

(off-topic: Given a certain major os version, say 10.8, how sensitive is an installation of the same port to different versions of the installer, anyway?)

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

I was wondering if you could please add download-friendly URLs for the installer, on the website. For example

I'm not opposed to adding redirecting "download current version" routes to the new MacPorts web site I'm developing. That's probably the simplest solution, since it wouldn't involve needing to bother the Mac OS Forge admins every time we release a new version of MacPorts.

(off-topic: Given a certain major os version, say 10.8, how sensitive is an installation of the same port to different versions of the installer, anyway?)

I'm not certain I understand the question. If you're asking if it's possible for a port to build successfully under one version of OS X and fail under a different version, the answer is yes, absolutely, for any number of reasons. Or are you asking if ports might fail to build under old versions of MacPorts? The answer to that is definitely yes; we don't support running anything older than the current stable version of MacPorts. New versions of MacPorts introduce new features; ports are updated to use those new features, making those ports incompatible with older versions of MacPorts that don't understand those features.

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

We are talking about the macports installer version, given a certain major level of MacOSX, correct? Is it not the first thing a user does after installation of macports is selfupdate? That means that macports will always be updated, no matter what.

Not only is sudo port selfupdate something we recommend users run frequently (and nag them to run if they haven't in the past two weeks), it's also done by the installer before it finishes. So it doesn't particularly matter if you just code your script to download and install MacPorts 2.3.1 for now and pretty much forget about it for a few years; even if we release new versions of MacPorts in that time, the MacPorts 2.3.1 installer will leave you with the current version of MacPorts. It is possible that in the distant future we may limit how far back selfupdate is able to update MacPorts; we've done that once before. If we do that again, you may have to update the version of MacPorts your script installs at that time.

If we are talking about the version of a certain port, no problem: Ports that I need to pin, I just tell puppet to ensure they are at a certain version.

I'm not familiar with puppet's capabilities, but note that MacPorts does not have a built-in capability for installing older versions of a port; it's currently a manual process and not one we intend users to need to perform on a regular basis.