Using portfile-update

About 6 months ago, I threw together a script to help me automate the process of updating a Portfile for a package from GNOME ftp servers. I called the script gport and wrote it in PHP simply because I knew that language.

I have been using that script to maintain the GNOME ports for the DarwinPorts project, thinking all the while that it might be useful if it was more generalized, tweaking it and adding some features during this time.

I usually used the script with the -o flag so that its output would scroll past in Console.app, and sometimes with the -k flag so that I could return the output log after the script had successfully updated the port. (By default it deletes a log if the update was successful, but keeps the log if it fails. This has allowed me to scan my copy of the CVS repository when using CVL for update failures, as CVL flags files not in CVS with a blue star.)

This past weekend, I rewrote the script to be a little more robust, and to update any Portfile (although automatic version determination only works for GNOME FTP server-based ports) and renamed it to be a little more meaningful.