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Fixing broken perl5 / perl5.8 macports installation

Thu, 3 Mar, 2011

Posted by James Gordon at 21:34

11 comments

So after spending an entire weekend rebuilding my Macbook last month, with a nice shiny new Macports installation that successfully upgraded the installed ports on the first two times I ran sudo port upgraded outdated, I was somewhat dismayed when the third attempt failed dismally:

--->  Installing perl5 @5.12.3_0+perl5_12
--->  Deactivating perl5 @5.8.9_0
--->  Cleaning perl5
--->  Activating perl5 @5.12.3_0+perl5_12
Error: Target org.macports.activate returned: Image error: /opt/local/bin/a2p is being used by the active perl5.8 port.  Please deactivate this port first, or use 'port -f activate perl5' to force the activation.
Portfile changed since last build; discarding previous state.
--->  Computing dependencies for apache2
--->  Dependencies to be installed: perl5
--->  Activating perl5 @5.12.3_0+perl5_12
Error: Target org.macports.activate returned: Image error: /opt/local/bin/a2p is being used by the active perl5.8 port.  Please deactivate this port first, or use 'port -f activate perl5' to force the activation.
Error: Failed to install perl5
Log for perl5 is at: /opt/local/var/macports/logs/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_lang_perl5/main.log
Error: The following dependencies were not installed: perl5
Error: Unable to upgrade port: 1
To report a bug, see <http://guide.macports.org/#project.tickets>

After wasting valuable minutes of my life reading this thread, I managed to figure out a nice, clean fix.

Firstly, use this command to see which versions of perl5 you have on your system:

sudo port installed | grep perl

In my case the output looked like this:

  perl5 @5.8.9_0
  perl5 @5.12.3_0+perl5_12
  perl5.12 @5.12.3_1 (active)
  perl5.8 @5.8.9_3 (active)

So I used these two commands to remove perl5.8 from my system:

sudo port uninstall perl5 @5.8.9_0
sudo port uninstall perl5.8

I then reissued the sudo port upgrade outdated command and, upon doing so, tons of things recompiled (mostly stuff that was dependent on p5). The process took a while but completed successfully and, most importantly, GIMP worked fine afterwards. :-)

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Posted by Georg (not verified) on 18 May 2012 at about 17:15.

What a hint, saved my

What a hint, saved my time....

Thanks

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Posted by Anonymous (not verified) on 19 Nov 2011 at about 00:18.

fixing broken perl5 macports install

Just great!

Solved my problem with this annoying msg when preparing to install OpenCV.

Good job and congrats!

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Posted by Brian (not verified) on 05 Nov 2011 at about 06:35.

thanks!

Thanks. This fixed my identical issue.

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Posted by Anonymous (not verified) on 24 Oct 2011 at about 02:04.

The general idea?

So is the general idea to remove the packages for the OLDER version and then let the newer version update cleanly? My version numbers were slightly different, but I removed the two packages associated with perl5.8/perl @5.8.x and kept the ones that were more current, the perl5.12/perl @5.12.x.

Thanks for this.

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Posted by James Gordon on 07 Oct 2011 at about 14:19.

Not sure...

I'm not sure about that error.

To be honest, I have decided to wean myself off Macports by using Zend Server (CE) for PHP/Apache/MySQL and installing other apps (such as GIMP) from the installer packages provided by the authors or simply compile from source (eg. ffmpeg and friends). The reason for this is that I want to upgrade to Lion, but I'm pretty sure, based on several blog posts, that Macports is going to die yet again and require more time to clean up than the actual Lion installation is going to take. As a professional software developer I just cannot afford to be spending hours and hours fiddling around with Macports every time I upgrade OS X.

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Posted by Anonymous (not verified) on 07 Oct 2011 at about 08:29.

Hi, i get a similar output,

Hi,

i get a similar output, but when i try to sudo port uninstall perl5 @5.8.9_0
---> Uninstalling perl5 @5.8.9_0
Error: port uninstall failed: error deleting "/opt/local/var/macports/software/perl5/5.8.9_0": directory not empty

I guess deleting the port manually is not a good idea, any alternatives?

N

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Posted by Casey (not verified) on 02 Oct 2011 at about 13:56.

Thank god for you

I have been googling this for what feels like forever. Thank you.

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Posted by Anonymous (not verified) on 05 Sep 2011 at about 01:05.

Thanks!

Just did a fresh install and update, then installed directly from the web and then I ran into this bug... Why its not posted on macports I have no idea,

This work 100% thx! E10^6

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Posted by Shawn (not verified) on 02 Sep 2011 at about 09:04.

Thanks!

Thanks for posting this, it worked perfect.

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Posted by Lloyd Budd (not verified) on 30 Jul 2011 at about 14:54.

Thanks for this.

I haven't updated macports in a long time and encountered the same thing. This saved me some time.

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Posted by Mariano Peterson (not verified) on 16 May 2011 at about 14:58.

I ran into the same problem

I ran into the same problem but your suggestion worked perfectly. Thanks!

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