Removing macports when the "port" is down

Question

I am trying to install several dependencies for the application that I am running, and I am worried that I may have broken the dev environment. I run this program on a MacBook (OSX Tiger, I do not have access to a newer version). MacPorts is officially broken, returning this error when I try to execute any command:

sqlite error: near "ADD": syntax error (1) while executing query: ALTER TABLE registry.files ADD COLUMN binary bool while executing "registry::open $db_path" (procedure "mportinit" line 633) invoked from within "mportinit ui_options global_options global_variations" 

Seeing this happening on any __ port command, I cannot use the standard MacPort removal method. However, given that I am the one who received it in this state, in the first place, I would prefer not to deceive myself, not knowing what I am doing.

• Is this a fixable problem? Only in the interests of my own knowledge does anyone know what exactly could cause this error or what does it really mean in terms of macport functioning?

• How can I (provided it is necessary / a good idea) completely remove macro ports? I would rather not face the problem of reinstalling all my ports, but this is better than what I have.

Answer 1

MacPorts will typically run on older versions of Mac OS X, as developers do not intentionally violate compatibility. MacPorts officially only supports the latest version of Mac OS X and earlier (at the time of this writing, these are 10.7 Lion and 10.6 Snow Leopard).

However, according to your report, the latest MacPorts 2.1.0 update seems to have compatibility issues with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. As indicated in the error message above, an earlier version of the SQLite library does not seem to understand the ALTER TABLE ... ADD COLUMN syntax used to update the port registry.

In this case, I assume that only the update procedure itself is affected, and normal operation will work. This procedure should bring your MacPorts registry to a newer version necessary for the new features added in this release. Creating a new empty registry will probably still work. However, this requires a complete reinstall of MacPorts and all of your ports.

Follow the removal instructions , but skip the first command, because port can no longer be started. This may cause some port ports to be installed at system locations, but in most cases this works fine. Then install MacPorts from the source using the installation instructions in the manual.

Answer 2

This was a bug in MacPorts 2.1.0 that only affected Tiger, which was fixed in 2.1.1. If you are still using 2.0.4, you can "suudo port selfupdate" to 2.1.1 without a problem. If you were already running selfupdate while 2.1.0 were missing and therefore cannot use any port commands, you can re-run the last disk image installer for Tiger , and then run selfupdate to go to 2.1.1.