Upgrading a port

MacPorts, formerly known as DarwinPorts, is a variant of the BSD ports system for Darwin and Mac OS X. This page describes how to upgrade a port in MacPorts to a later version of the respective software.

Case example

In this example, we update the portfile for gnustep-base. This is just an example.

Downloading latest upstream source

To find out the URL where the upstream source is located, do:

port cat gnustep-base 

Check whether a newer version is available at that download location and download it, in this case gnustep-base-1.16.3.tar.gz

Calculating md5

Calculate the md5 checksum of the upstream source with

md5 gnustep-base-1.16.3.tar.gz  MD5 (gnustep-base-1.16.3.tar.gz) = 32ae302922a0a6e14c7008a105014bba

Editing the portfile

Copy the portfile first so that we can create a patch later:

cp $(port file gnustep-base) $(port file gnustep-base).orig port edit gnustep-base

Change version to 1.16.3 Change md5 to the value calculated before

Creating the patch

diff -u $(port file gnustep-base).orig $(port file gnustep-base) > gnustep-base.patch

Testing the patched portfile

Now build it with

port rpm gnustep-base

Activating the new version

In order to activate the new version so that it is used when builting additional software, you need to do in addition:

port archive gnustep-base port upgrade -n gnustep-base

Finally, check that your activated version is really the new one with

port installed gnustep-base

Submitting the patch to MacPorts

Search whether a ticket already exists, if not submit a new one with the patch attached.