MacPorts    P s e u d o - n a m e s

  1. General idea

    In order to perform an action (i.e. verb), port must generally know on which port it applies (i.e. object). For that purpose the user enters so called port names. Each port name identifies a single software package to be processed. The exact name and, if necessary, configurations of a software package must be entered at installation step. In the daily maintenance practice however the user operates on a set of ports bearing specific properties. Using so called pseudo names is a convenient way to define those ports.

    Note: In rare cases the action can only apply to one immutable set of objects: there is no need to identify an object. (As an example action rev-upgrade always applies to all installed packages, therefore the only acceptable syntax is port rev-upgrade).

  2. Pseudo-names

    Name Description
    all all the ports in each ports tree listed in sources.conf
    current the port in the current working directory
    active set of installed and active ports
    inactive set of installed but inactive ports
    actinac set of installed ports that have both an active version and one or more inactive ver- sions.
    installed set of all installed ports
    uninstalled ports in the ports tree(s) that aren’t installed
    outdated installed ports that are out of date with respect to their current version/revision in the ports tree(s)
    obsolete set of ports that are installed but no longer exist in any port tree
    requested installed ports that were explicitly asked for
    unrequested installed ports that were installed only to satisfy dependencies
    leaves installed ports that are unrequested and have no dependents
    Tab. Pseudo-names of MacPorts ports (which expand to a set of port names).