MacPorts on Snow

MacPorts on Ice?

the move from Leopard to Snow Leopard can be slippery

... emacs-app won't compile; different versions of python fall over each other; NLTK won't build ...

Here are some tips others have found helpful:

try

% sudo port selfupdate
% port installed
% sudo port uninstall installed

sudo port selfupdate

brings your MacPorts installation up to date. If this fails you should just start over

port installed

shows you what you currently have installed.
Much of what you see you won't recognise as this also lists the prerequisites installed to support the things you asked for explicitly.

sudo port uninstall installed

removes all your installed ports

or just start over

I had some problems when I moved to snow leopard, so I also removed all trace of macports

sudo rm -rf /opt/local \
/Applications/MacPorts \
/Applications/DarwinPorts \
/Library/Tcl/macports1.0 \
/Library/Tcl/darwinports1.0 \
/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.* \
/Library/StartupItems/DarwinPortsStartup \
/Library/Receipts/MacPorts*.pkg \
/Library/Receipts/DarwinPorts*.pkg \
~/.macports

then reinstall MacPorts

use the Snow Leopard MacPorts disk image

then do

% sudo port selfupdate

check

which ports are available for snow-leopard? before you decide which ports to install.

% sudo port install  <????>

sudo port install <????>

will install whatever you specify
<????> should be a space- separated list of port names,
with no <   >

There is a problem with emacs-app—and we can't work without emacs...

install emacs-app

To install emacs-app, first download emacs-app-Portfile-snow-leopard.patch
and
emacs-23.1-snow-leopard.patch

% sudo port clean emacs-app
% sudo port install emacs-app
% cd $(port dir emacs-app)
% sudo patch -p0 < ~/Downloads/emacs-app-Portfile-snow-leopard.patch
% sudo cp ~/Downloads/emacs-23.1-snow-leopard.patch ./files/
% sudo port -D . install

Works for me, but your mileage may vary ....