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Table of contents

  1. MacPorts - My Experience
  2. Fundamental Usage of MacPorts:
  3. Documentation & Support:
  4. Miscellaneous Issues and Discoveries:
  5. Notes on the High Sierra Installation of MacPorts
  6. REFERENCES:

MacPorts - My Experience

This began several months ago after realizing that the one-time largest corporation in the world was shipping 16-year-old open source software with their pricey computers. For any Apple Apologists reading this, please just STFU, and move on. To say I'm disappointed with Apple would be an understatement. As I see things today, we must choose our technology products to balance our exposure to exploitative and extortionate corporate interests against the very personal concept of value.

In other words, I still count myself as a mac user at this point, but I won't allow Apple to dictate my computing environment! As I occasionally use my mac for more than perusing social media, it's important to me to have reasonably up-to-date tools, and the ability to add tools to suit my needs. As Apple has no package manager, one is required to find a third party. Fortunately there are (at least) two: MacPorts, and HomeBrew. After some research, and a ridiculously poor experience with Homebrew I decided that MacPorts was a better alternative. My experience to date suggests I made a good decision.

That said, the sequel below is simply my attempt to help others gain a bit of freedom-of-choice, and share what I learned during and after the MacPorts install. As of today, I've installed MacPorts on a new-ish 2023 M2 Mac w/ Ventura, a 2019 Catalina - 10.15.6, and an old-ish 2011 High Sierra - 10.13.6 Macbook Pro. Most of this post is based on the 2019 Catalina installation, but I've added a section at the end noting the difference between the Catalina and High Sierra installations. I should also say that much of what follows is borrowed from MacPorts Install page. Much more detailed guidance may be found on the MacPorts' website. Finally, I am not affiliated with MacPorts in any way.

Installation:

I'm not going to attempt a summary of the installation procedures. Installation of MacPorts is a bit more complicated than other package managers you may have used. This additional complexity is simply a fact of life - the inevitable result of being an open-source package manager for a closed-source operating system. And Apple does not make this easy - they can be arbitrary and capricious, and their decisions are based on serving their own interests first - perhaps exclusively in some cases.

The MacPorts installation procedures all follow a similar pattern, but each version of macOS has a different download, different Xcode dependencies, different command line developer tools dependencies, and may even have different procedures. The only reliable and up-to-date guides to installing MacPorts on macOS is on their website. Use it.

Post Installation:

MacPorts "pkg" installer worked well for me, and there's nothing I can add. The MacPorts installer updates the $PATH env variable for you, but you will need to source it before it takes effect:

$ . ~/.profile						# use for bash; aka `source ~/.profile` 
% . ~/.zprofile						# use for zsh; aka `source ~/.zprofile`

Fundamental Usage of MacPorts:

NOTE: This document covers only the basics. It is intended only as a brief summary of what I consider the most frequently used commands in MacPorts. See MacPorts excellent documentation and/or man port to get the details on using this tool.

The primary user interface to MacPorts is the port command, and the various facilities it provides for installing ports. Learn the details by reading the man page; from the CLI enter: man port The first thing you should do after you install MacPorts is to make sure it is fully up to date by pulling the latest revisions to the Portfiles and any updated MacPorts base code from their rsync server, all accomplished simply by running the port selfupdate command as the superuser on your system:

Update your ports:

% man port							# read the port man page
% sudo port selfupdate	# update/sync your local system with the MacPorts server
# the output may also include a suggestion to run `port upgrade outdated`
% sudo port upgrade outdated
# ...
%

Automating MacPorts updates:

Running this port selfupdate command on a regular basis is recommended -- it ensures your MacPorts installation is always up to date. One way to accomplish this is to set up a cron job as follows:

% sudo crontab -e					# use root's crontab as sudo is required

This will launch the editor specified in your environment. Enter the following lines in the editor and then save it:

0 2 */2 * *  (echo "----------\n"$(date) && sudo /opt/local/bin/port -q selfupdate) >> /Users/<username>/portupdatelog.txt 2>&1
15 2 */2 * * (sudo /opt/local/bin/port -q upgrade outdated && echo "----------\n") >> /Users/<username>/portupdatelog.txt 2>&1

This will run port selfupdate command and port upgrade outdated every other day at 2 AM. It will also create an entry in a logfile that captures stdout and stderr outputs. You may refer to the crontab guru if you need help changing the schedule for this cron job.

You can read more about setting up cron in this recipe, or you can use the native launchd or the always-handy (3rd party) LaunchControl app from soma-zone. Regardless of which one of these you use, there's a very simple bash script here to help.

What ports are installed?:

This is a two-part question. Some ports are installed because we requested they be installed; other ports are installed because they are needed by ports we requested.

% port installed requested    # su privileges are not needed
# ...
% port installed              # includes dependencies for requested ports
# ...

Finding and installing ports:

You may search for ports to install, and get additional information on those ports:

port search <portname>
port info <portname>

where <portname> is the name of the port you are searching for, or a partial name. To install a port you've chosen, you need to run the port install command as the Unix superuser:

sudo port install <portname>

where now <portname> maps to an exact port name in the ports tree, such as those returned by the port search command. Please consult the port(1) man page for complete documentation for this command and the software installation process.

Check for 'Variants':

You may discover - in reading the notes after installing a port - that there are variants for that port. For example, after a recent installation of ffmpeg, the notes revealed this:

To include all nonfree, GPLed and LGPL code use variant +nonfree.

Here's how to accommodate that:

% sudo port install ffmpeg +nonfree

In general +<variant> adds non-default variants, and -<variant> removes default variants. MacPorts documentation on the 'Variant' feature covers all the options in detail.

The right way to handle variants is to scope them out before installing:

% port variants ffmpeg

However, if you fail to do that, it's easy enough to recover. Simply re-install the port using the desired variant handling, and subsequently remove the (inactive) variant you don't want:

% sudo port install ffmpeg +nonfree
...
% port installed requested
The following ports are currently installed:
  ffmpeg @4.2.2_0+gpl2
  ffmpeg @4.2.2_0+gpl2+nonfree (active)

Note that checking requested ports tells us that the +nonfree variant has been made the active port, and the originally installed variant is rendered as inactive - which is exactly what was wanted (in this case). As an inactive port, you will be prompted to uninstall it when you run sudo port reclaim.

Clean up after yourself:

Another maintenance item is cleaning up inactive or deprecated ports to reclaim disk space:

% sudo port reclaim
# ...
%

Uninstall an installed port:

You will occasionally want to un-install or remove ports you have previously installed:

% sudo port uninstall <portname>

Using sudo as an un-privileged user:

One other item may be useful if you run your mac as an unprivileged user - grant your username sudo privileges necessary to maintain certain elements of the MacPorts installation. Here's one way to do it:

% sudo visudo
# add the following to your sudoer file:
<username> ALL = (ALL) /opt/local/bin/*

Don't forget to flush your cache!

This has happened more than once:

QUESTION: I installed the package file from MacPorts to take the place of the out-of-date package in Apple's macOS distribution. After a successful installation, running that package still results in running the older version! Why didn't MacPorts install the new version properly?

ANSWER: Your system has cached the location of the executable as /usr/bin - this is the folder where Apple places all of the native CLI executables. MacPorts has installed the new version in /opt/local/bin. MacPorts has "done the right thing" - the resolution is to flush your cache:

The complete flush:

% hash -r

The surgical removal:

% hash -d file 
# where 'file' is the name of the new package you installed

You may now run which file, and you should see the executable in /opt/local/bin.

Set your PATH environment variable:

There's a NOTE appended to some of the ports (e.g. grep that is well worth repeating here:

grep has the following notes:

This port previously installed itself without a g* prefix, thus overshadowing system binaries such as grep, fgrep, and egrep. The port is now changed so that it does install with a g* prefix, like other GNU ports. This means that you'll now find GNU grep at /opt/local/bin/ggrep. If you dislike typing ggrep, you can create a shell alias or you can add /opt/local/libexec/gnubin to your PATH, wherein non-g* prefixed symlinks are installed. In other words, /opt/local/libexec/gnubin contains GNU binaries without any prefix to the file names, so you can type grep and get GNU grep just as before.

And so it's up to you: Use the command ggrep to access the newer, up-to-date, MacPorts-provided version of grep, OR add /opt/local/libexec/gnubin to your PATH, and use the command grep :

PATH=/opt/local/libexec/gnubin:$PATH

If you use any of the GNU tools:

I'm using a few GNU tools that are available as MacPorts packages. Some of these tools are packaged as a "set" - for example GNU's find-utils, and core-utils packages. The issue is this: to avoid command name collisions, MacPorts appends the single letter g to the command's name; e.g. gfind, glocate, etc. I find this "taxing". I've discovered a solution that seems to work well so far. Rather than detail it here, please refer to the Q&A on Unix&Linux SE for the time being: How to get 'man gfind' when I enter 'man find'?. *

The other issue with the *-utils packages is knowing exactly which ports are included in those packages. Here's a solution for that:

port contents coreutils | less	# use the pager because this is quite a long list!
port contents findutils
port contents diffutils

Before leaving this topic, here's another trick that may help:

Suppose you find a tool, and you want to find out which package provided it:

$ port provides `which gunlink`
/opt/local/bin/gunlink is provided by: coreutils
$ port provides `which ggrep`
/opt/local/bin/ggrep is provided by: grep

* Please also note that this is unrelated to the function provided by port select; ref man port-select.

Documentation & Support:

Help on a wide variety of topics is also available in the project Guide and through the Trac portal should you run into any problems installing and/or using MacPorts. Of particular relevance are the installation & usage sections of the former and the FAQ section of the Wiki, where MacPorts keeps track of questions frequently fielded on their mailing lists. The MacPorts Wiki is highly recommended.

If any of these resources do not answer your questions or if you need any kind of extended support, reach out and make contact! Rocket Chat is one way to get help on IRC - it has worked extremely well for me. IRC support continues to work well for me, but it's now available through libera chat.

Miscellaneous Issues and Discoveries:

  1. Apple's Command Line Tools (CLT) are now included with Xcode (I'm probably the last to know :). This seems to obviate the need to install CLT separately. However...
  2. After installing a macOS update (10.15.5 to be specific), an attempt to install a port generated the following Warning from MacPorts:
  Warning: cltversion: The Command Line Tools are installed, but MacPorts cannot determine the version.
  Warning: cltversion: For a possible fix, please see: https://trac.macports.org/wiki/ProblemHotlist#reinstall-clt

  • The cause of this consternation is a flaw in Apple's software: updating Xcode (or in this case, a general update) removes the CLT receipt! This makes it impossible for MacPorts to determine the version of CLT; thus the Warning.

  • It turns out that Apple has now displaced root as the super-user on macOS in favor of themselves! Consequently, Software Update cannot be used (which would be more efficient) because the file used to flag the update is in /tmp, and therefore inaccessible as long a csrutil is active. And so - the only fix that will work is to download and re-install the CLT.

Notes on the High Sierra Installation of MacPorts

There are different installers for each version of macOS; they are listed on the MacPorts install page. In general, the installation experience on High Sierra was the same as for Catalina. The difficulty came about in having to upgrade an older version of Xcode on my High Sierra system. Since Apple does not provide an in-app upgrade mechanism for Xcode, I felt the safe approach was to un-install the old Xcode. If you know what to do, un-installing Xcode is only tedious; if you don't know what to do, it could lead to disaster. I didn't (and still don't) know how to un-install Xcode because Apple doesn't provide that information. I didn't let ignorance stop me however; I un-installed by this procedure. All I can say at this point is: "so far, so good".

REFERENCES: