Porticus 1.6.3 Released
A new version of Porticus is now available, this is a bugfix release. It fixes a bug when uninstalling multiple ports where the installed ports have variants selected. The uninstall should now operate correctly.
I am currently looking at adding variant description details and non-root mode support for the next version.
You can get Porticus 1.6.3 here.
July 17th, 2009 at 9:36 am
I’m using the instructions from: http://blog.imk.cx/2008/11/02/building-and-%20using-x86_64-macports/
to setup macports under snow leopard. It would be nice if there was a preference for adding options to the port command line. Like +universal.
July 17th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
You can specify variants when installing/updating ports. If the port has a universal variant just select it in the variant table when installing, this adds the +universal to port command. You can also use the etc/macports/variants.conf file to set default variants (I haven’t tried this).
July 30th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
Hi. Great tool, thanks. I have copied (using Migration Assistant) from an iMac to a MacBook Pro to a different user. Running Porticus updates has problems, which I attribute most likely to permissions. How is that easily addressed? If need be and I have to uninstall and reinstall, is there an easy way to retain all the ports, or would they have to all be individually manually reinstalled? How do I uninstall Porticus? Thanks.
July 30th, 2009 at 11:49 pm
Hi Larry,
Interesting, I haven’t tried anything like that!
What error messages are being generated? Is the iMac a Intel or PowerPC? If it is PowerPC then migration almost certainly won’t work (unless all ports are built as Universal).
If the iMac is Intel then I don’t know what permissions Migration Assistant will give you, they should be owner root, group admin I believe. You can use chown and chgrp from the command line to set the permissions, something like sudo chown -R root:admin /opt but please check the man pages and file locations before trying it!
To uninstall Porticus just drag it to the trash, you can also delete the ~/Library/Application Support/Porticus folder and the com.alittledrop.Porticus.plist in the ~/Library/Preferences folder.
I hope that helps…
August 1st, 2009 at 1:49 am
Thank you for the info. Intel iMac, Intel MacBook Pro. I am a Mac newbie, so ‘chown’ and ‘chgrp’ and ‘man pages’ unfortunately is Mac-talk to me.
I ended up deleting MacPorts and Porticus on the MBP for now, unless there is an easy way to package and ‘port the ports’ as it were, from one machine to another. Can that be done? Is that something you would consider adding to Porticus? Thanks.
August 1st, 2009 at 9:45 am
Sounds like it is probably safer just to start again. The MacPorts user mailing list might be a good place to ask questions http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/macports-users if you still want to copy ports from one machine to another.
It is unlikely that this is a feature that I can add to Porticus though.
August 5th, 2009 at 7:03 am
I have just discovered Porticus after reading the recent article on ADC: really good job!
Have you ever considered to open source it?
Every six months, or so, someone in the Darwin community have tried in the past to make a new GUI for MacPorts but none was snappy enough for a daily use, seriously.
August 5th, 2009 at 8:49 am
Glad you like it. I have considered making it open source and it may happen in the future.
August 7th, 2009 at 4:27 am
I’m using Porticus for quite some time and really appreciate the effort you put into it!
Is there a way to lower the priority with which the port command is run? I can do it by looking for the pids and using renice, but it would be nice (no pun intended) to have a preference setting for that.
August 31st, 2009 at 9:27 pm
Just tested Porticus 1.6.3 in Snow Leopard with MacPorts 1.8.0 and it works great.
August 31st, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Glad to hear it, I know of one potential issue with changes to the upgrade options (-f replaced with –enforce-variants and –force) which will be addressed in the next release – hopefully fairly soon!
September 3rd, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Hi… I am making some notes about installing and configuring Porticus that may be useful to contribute back at intervals.
1. Does the Preference “At startup” mean “of the System” or “of Porticus”? Since this is ambiguous, can I argue for the extra words?
2. The Preference “At startup” option “Update everything” is evidently -d selfupdate and there exists after all in Porticus a menu “Self Update”. Therefore would you consider to rename “Update everything” to “Do MacPorts selfupdate”
3. When Porticus issues a selfupdate, may it as well obey its own Global command flag preference for “debug” as to whether or not to issue the -d flag when running selfupdate?
4. Presently if one runs Ports > Update All (at least, when no smart-folders display any Outdated ports) the user is advised
Error: No ports found
The meaning is not apparent. Can Porticus ascertain (intercept) states where there is no point to run the menu item, and provide the user a different message, maybe “No ports appear Outdated.”
Does the menu item in essence mean “Update All Outdated” regardless of whether or not they are selected and – if that is the case – might this renaming be helpful?
September 3rd, 2009 at 8:55 pm
Thanks Jim, useful comments and I will look at updating for the next build.
September 6th, 2009 at 11:42 am
I second the desire for open source. I would like to contribute and try to make Porticus a better program.
September 18th, 2009 at 7:41 am
Hello,
its a little pity that the the gui need to run under an admin account. It will be comfortable to run porticus successfully under an useraccount (with double-entering the admin pw indeed).
Greets
September 22nd, 2009 at 9:57 pm
I didn’t know it needed to run under an admin account, I’ll have a look.
Thanks
Richard