When I try to install mail-client/mailx-8.1.2-20021129-r3, it attempts to create several symlinks, two of which fail on Mac OS X. /usr/share/man/man1/Mail.1 is created as a symlink to mail.1, and /usr/bin/Mail is created as a symlink to mail. Since the HFS+ filesystem is case-insensitive (though case-preserving), Mail.1 and mail.1 are treated as the same file by the filesystem, and thus the symlink fails because it would be pointing to itself (thus setting up an infinite symlink loop). The error message is: "[Errno 62] Too many levels of symbolic links: '/usr/share/man/man1/Mail.1'" Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install Gentoo for Mac OS X. 2. emerge -av mail-client/mailx 3. Actual Results: [Errno 62] Too many levels of symbolic links: '/usr/share/man/man1/Mail.1' Same error message for /usr/bin/Mail Expected Results: Should have skipped installing those two symlinks on the macos platform. emerge info: !!! Using `which gcc` to gcc locate version, this may break !!! DISTCC, installing gcc-config and setting your current gcc !!! profile will fix this Portage 20040726 (default-macos-10.3, gcc-3.3, unavailable, 7.5.0 Power Macintosh powerpc) ================================================================= System uname: 7.5.0 Power Macintosh powerpc macos-20040726 distcc 2.0.1-zeroconf powerpc-apple-darwin7.0 (protocol 1) (default port 3632) [disabled] Autoconf: Automake: Binutils: ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="macos" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CFLAGS="-O2 -pipe" CHOST="powerpc-apple-darwin" COMPILER="gcc3" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/share/config /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="collision-protect cvs keepwork" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.osuosl.org/" MAKEOPTS="-j1" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.us.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="macos apache2 jpeg"
Created attachment 37439 [details, diff] Ebuild patch to fix the problem on macos I created a patch to the mailx-8.1.2-20021129-r3 ebuild that fixes this bug by skipping the two offending symlinks if and only if the ebuild is being run on macos.
Since there is already a mail excutable on Mac OSX (/usr/bin/mail), this would require a <g>prefix like sed. Is there any functionality to be gained by doing this, or is it merely an omission in package.provided?
Any update on this? Is there a valid reason we should have mailx on mac os x, given /usr/bin/mail exists? If not, we can drop the liblockfile bug too, since its only reverse dependency is mailx (AFAIK).
This depends on bug 67162. Will take a look at it when 67162 has gotten somewhere. Until then, this bug should remain frozen.
