Noemi Millman: Triopter: Updating DarwinPorts / MacPorts

OK, updating your DarwinPorts is pretty simple, but there are a couple of gotchas I thought I’d mention, since I came across them today.

1. Start with a selfupdate: $ sudo port selfupdate to get the latest version of DarwinPorts itself and the latest installable software list.
2. Do not, and I repeat do not, run $ sudo port upgrade all. It will try to install every port that exists. Which could take months.
3. Dorun $ sudo port upgrade outdated, which will find all your installed ports that have new versions, and upgrade them.
4. Most of the upgrades insgtall pretty quickly, but gcc takes forever to compile. Hours upon hours (4 hours for me on a dual G5 with lots of RAM) . Use Activity Monitor to check CPU usage see whether it’s still actually working or has hung — a couple of the other ports hung for me — I had to cancel the process and start over (thankfully, if you run upgrade oudated it will skip the ones that already installed successfully).