Tutorial: Installing MacPorts

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MacPorts is a great project that brings a bunch open source application to the Mac world. It works like the ports system in FreeBSD, OpenBSD or NetBSD, <insert other flavors here>.

It takes care of all the work,

• Resolve dependencies
• Download
• Patch
• Configure
• Compile
• Install

Software port definition from Wikipedia

In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed (e.g. different CPU, operating system, or third party library). The term is also used in a general way to refer to the changing of software/hardware to make them usable in different environments.

1st step download:
Head over to MacPorts and download the latest version 1.5.0 for your system MacPorts-1.5.0-10.4.dmg for Tiger, MacPorts-1.5.0-10.3.dmg for Panther.

2nd step install:
Install it, just follow the instructions on screen. All should run well, and it might take a bit, since it as to install all the ports tree. The ports tree is a directory structure with the applications (ports) divided into categories, each port as it's own set of files, including patches, scripts, etc.... For MacPorts is lives in /opt/local/var/macports/sources/rsync.macports.org/release/ports

3rd step setup:
Now we need to set it up. You can choose to use the Terminal /Applications/Utilities/Terminal or a GUI utility PortAuthority or Porticus. This tutorial will focus on the terminal usage, the Terminal.app will do just fine, but i prefer to use iTerm.

Let's start by letting your system know where MacPorts was installed by adding it to your $PATH environment variable.

In the terminal, setup PATH

eflow:~ ravage$ export PATH=$PATH:/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin

verify

eflow:~ ravage$ echo $PATH
/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin 

make it permanent, add the path to ~/.profile, the DISPLAY is for binding X11 to display 0.

echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin' >> ~/.profile
echo 'export DISPLAY=:0.0' >> ~/.profile

4th step update:
Now we are ready to use MacPorts, let's sync it and update it. The sync command fetchs port updates from the Internet, selfupdate tries to update MacPorts system. The sudo command, elevates the user privileges to root (administrator), when asked for a password, just enter yours and press enter. It should take a while to sync with online repositories.

eflow:~ ravage$ sudo port sync
Password:
eflow:~ ravage$ sudo port selfupdate
MacPorts base version 1.520 installed
Downloaded MacPorts base version 1.520
The MacPorts installation is not outdated and so was not updated
selfupdate done!

5th step use:
You should sync and selfupdate regularly. I usualy sync before installing ports, and selftupdate from time to time.

So how do we use MacPorts? Very easy, let's imagine i want to install Vim 7 with Python, Ruby, Perl and Multibyte support

lets search for Vim, use search to see if the application you need exists, ex: port search apache

eflow:~ ravage$ port search vim
vimdrop                        aqua/vimdrop   0.8  
vim                            editors/vim    7.1.100    
vim-app                        editors/vim-app 7.1.100     
p5-text-vimcolor               perl/p5-text-vimcolor 0.11     
vim2html                       textproc/vim2html 1.46    

We are interested in Vim 7 (vim editors/vim), now, i want vim to support a bunch of features which where specified above. MacPorts provides the variants keyword for that, that way we can check which features our port will be installed with, lets take a peek,

eflow:~ ravage$ port variants vim
vim has the variants:
        universal
        athena
        gtk1
        gtk2
        motif
        tiny
        small
        big
        huge
        multibyte
        xim
        perl
        python
        ruby
        tcl
        cscope
        nls

hmmmm, there's a bunch of them! Let's install Vim with just the ones we want.

eflow:~ ravage$ sudo port install vim +python +ruby +perl +multibyte
Password:
--cropped--

now MacPorts will work it's voodoo and you will see a bunch of output, it will take some time to finish. All port are installed into /opt/local, so it won't interfere with your current system, Vim will be in,

eflow:~ ravage$ ls -l /opt/local/bin/vim
-rwxr-xr-x 2 root wheel 2441848 2007-08-22 12:21 /opt/local/bin/vim

Now play with it and install whatever you need!

Now, we want to see what we have installed, just do,

eflow:~ ravage$ port installed
The following ports are currently installed:
  a52dec @0.7.4_0 (active)
  apache2 @2.2.4_0+openbsd
  apache2 @2.2.4_1+openbsd (active)
  apr @1.2.8_0
--cropped--

Uninstalling it's also easy with,

eflow:~ ravage$ sudo port uninstall vim
---> The following versions of vim are currently installed:
--cropped--
---> vim @7.1.087_0+cscope+multibyte+perl+python+ruby (active)
Error: port uninstall failed: Registry error: Please specify the full 
versionas recorded in the port registry.
eflow:~ ravage$ sudo port uninstall vim @7.1.087_0+cscope+multibyte+perl+python+ruby
---> Deactivating vim 7.1.087_0+cscope+multibyte+perl+python+ruby
--cropped--

Checking after a sync, which ports are outdated,

eflow:~ ravage$ port outdated
The following installed ports are outdated:
apr                            1.2.9_0 

Upgrading them,
eflow:~ ravage$ sudo port upgrade outdated


So now we can install, upgrade, uninstall. Just some other commands and we are done!

Checking contents of a installed port,
eflow:~ ravage$ port contents vim | less
Port vim contains:
  /opt/local/bin/ex
  /opt/local/bin/rview
  /opt/local/bin/rvim
  /opt/local/bin/view
  /opt/local/bin/vim
  /opt/local/bin/vimdiff
  /opt/local/bin/vimtutor
  /opt/local/bin/xxd
--cropped--


Which port provides a specific file,
eflow:~ ravage$ port provides /opt/local/bin/psql82 
/opt/local/bin/psql82 is provided by: postgresql82


To finalize, lets make Vim 7 default system wide,
eflow:~ ravage$ cd /usr/bin/
eflow:/usr/bin ravage$ sudo mv vim vim-6
eflow:/usr/bin ravage$ sudo ln -s /opt/local/bin/vim
eflow:/usr/bin ravage$ ls -l vim
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 18 2007-09-11 17:50 vim -> /opt/local/bin/vim
 
as you can see, now vim points to your vim installed from ports.

Well, i think most part is covered and should get you started on knowing and using MacPorts, which is an awesome project.

Feel free to point corrections or suggestions.

References:

http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/macports/wiki/UsingMacPortsQuickStart