Tips and Tricks for committers

This page provides some useful hints how to work with our infrastructure. And they can also make your work a lot easier.

Set svn properties automatically on new Portfiles

In the configuration for your Subversion client, enable automatic property setting and, for all files named Portfile, setting "svn:eol-style" to "native" and "svn:keywords" to "Id". If you are not using Subversion's own svn command-line client, see its documentation. For svn, you can make the appropriate changes by editing ~/.subversion/config as follows:

...

[miscellany]
enable-auto-props = yes

...

[auto-props]
Portfile = svn:eol-style=native;svn:keywords=Id

Create your own users directory in the MacPorts Subversion repository

Use the Trac Browser to explore the MacPorts Subversion repository. The repository root is located at https://svn.macosforge.org/repository/macports.

See also the explanation of ​local development port trees in the guide.

To create your own users directory:

svn mkdir https://svn.macports.org/repository/macports/users/<YourMacPortsUserName>

Then, checkout your user directory:

$ svn co https://svn.macports.org/repository/macports/users/<YourMacPortsUserName> ~/myports

Then edit your MacPorts sources.conf file /opt/local/etc/macports/sources.conf to add ~/myports to the list before the main rsync source at rsync.macports.org, e.g.:

file:///Users/<YourSystemUserName>/myports

To work on a copy of a port from MacPorts trunk, use svn copy. For example, to test changes on the cableswig port, you can copy the repository trunk (at the HEAD revision) to your new user branch:

$ svn mkdir ~/myports/devel
$ svn copy https://svn.macosforge.org/repository/macports/trunk/dports/devel/cableswig ~/myports/devel/

Another option for a large branch is to copy everything at the server side, where the copy is equivalent to a unix hard link in the file system; e.g.:

$ svn mkdir https://svn.macports.org/repository/macports/users/<YourMacPortsUserName>/devel
$ svn copy \
      https://svn.macosforge.org/repository/macports/trunk/dports/devel/cableswig \
      https://svn.macports.org/repository/macports/users/<YourMacPortsUserName>/devel/cableswig \
      -m "testing modifications to cableswig"
$ cd ~/myports
$ svn update

After the copy, run portindex in ~/myports (do this any time you add a new Portfile), e.g.:

$ cd ~/myports
$ svn update
$ portindex
$ port file cableswig

For more information about branches and merging, see ​http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.5/svn.branchmerge.html

Apply patches directly from Trac URL

Installation

Add the following functions to your .bashrc in order to apply patches directly from Trac.

function trac-get {
    local url=$1
    local dir=$2

    if [ -z $dir ]; then
        dir=.
    fi  

    curl "$url?format=raw" --create-dirs -o $dir/$(basename $1)
}

function trac-patch {
    local cmd=""
    while [[ $1 == -* ]]; do
        if [ "$1" == "--" ]; then
            break
        fi

        cmd="$cmd $1"
        shift
    done

    if [ -z $cmd ]; then
        cmd="-p0"
    fi  

    trac-get $1
    patch $cmd < $(basename $1)
}

Usage

Use like this:

1. Copy the URL to the patch from the Trac ticket page
2. Switch to the ports directory

   $ cd $(port dir foo)
   

3. Apply the patch

   $ trac-patch http://trac.macports.org/attachment/ticket/.../Portfile.diff
   

You can also add options to trac-patch which will get passed through to the patch tool. This is especially useful when the patch needs another prefix level.

$ trac-patch -p1 http://trac.macports.org/attachment/ticket/.../Portfile.diff

If you don't add any option, -p0 is used as a default. This should be the most common case.

trac-get can also download to another directory. If the directory does not yet exist, it will be created. Just add a second parameter with the name of the directory. If you omit the second parameter, the current directory is used.

$ trac-get http://trac.macports.org/attachment/ticket/.../Portfile new-port

Do Explorative Programming in tclsh with Readline Support

tclsh does not offer readline support by itself, which is quite annoying. When writing portfiles or tinkering with changes to Macports base, I need to experiment in a Tcl shell all the time to tests small things. But for that, command history and Emacs-like navigation within the line are essential. Unfortunately tclsh does not offer this.

You can also use Emacs’ tcl-mode: from within a tcl buffer, the tcl shell is just a C-t away. More info in ​tcler’s wiki.

Solution: use port rlwrap together with tclsh. When you invoke tclsh via rlwrap you get all the convenience you know from bash.

rlwrap tclsh

Or, put even an alias into ~/.bashrc

alias tclsh='rlwrap tclsh'

and don't think about it ever again.

If you want to test MacPorts Tcl extensions, you need to require the appropriate packages. For access to the 'strsed', 'reinplace', and other macport commands, put the following into ~/bin/macports_testing.tcl:

source /Library/Tcl/macports1.0/macports_fastload.tcl
package require macports 1.0
set portarchivemode no
package require port 1.0
package require Pextlib
set prefix /opt/local

Then source the file in tclsh8.4 (which is the Tcl version shipped with Leopard), i.e.:

$ rlwrap tclsh8.4
% source ~/bin/macports_testing.tcl
1.0
% strsed "foo" "s/f/m/"
moo
% 

Syntax Coloring When Editing Portfiles with Text Editors

See this page for setting up BBEdit or TextWrangler to have a MacPorts Language Module

Checksum tips

Checksums for port updates

If you're updating a port's version and simply need the checksums for the new version, run the following while in the port's directory:

$ port -v checksum
...
The correct checksum line may be:
checksums           md5     1ca0cf40350913fa620f73cbd906378a \
                    sha1    2921531ece0eacb303b0c9a4978d0d050dcfd5d2 \
                    rmd160  6cacbcf37581b5e19fe9fe674dd7b0722f1a19de

You can then copy/paste the result into the Portfile.

A bash script for checksums

#!/bin/bash
if [ -f "$1" ]; then
    basename $1 | sed -e "s/\(.*\)/\1 \\\/"
    md5 $1 | sed -e "s/^MD5.*=/md5/" | sed -e "s/\(.*\)/\1 \\\/"
    openssl sha1 $1 | sed -e "s/^SHA1.*=/sha1/" | sed -e "s/\(.*\)/\1 \\\/"
    openssl rmd160 $1 | sed -e "s/^R.*=/rmd160/"
fi

For example, assume this is in ~/bin/macports_checksum.bash, then we get:

$ macports_checksum.bash ~/Downloads/libpqxx-3.0.1.tar.gz 
libpqxx-3.0.1.tar.gz \
md5 23557f306821bf4cae39cca45acdf9e1 \
sha1 a37874511946ba340d5df2d92252177f9eb906f6 \
rmd160 1f842ea95ad6dd2cba2cdc2d2bd8e0be5063fb9b