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I have recently installed MacPorts. Whenever I try to install anything, however, I get an error of the following format:

m2214:~ speyer$ sudo port install xfig
Password:
--->  Computing dependencies for xfigError: Internal error: port lookup failed: too many nested evaluations (infinite loop?)
Error: Status 1 encountered during processing.
To report a bug, see <http://guide.macports.org/#project.tickets>

There is a substantial time delay between when "--> Computing dependencies for xfig" prints and the rest of the message.

Any suggestions? Google searching on the error message finds a lot of bug reports and complaints, but no fixes.

System Details:

MacPorts Version: 1.9.1

OS.X 10.6.4 Intel

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2 Answers

up vote 1 down vote accepted

Try running the deps command to see if MacPorts will compute the dependents at all:

% port deps pstoedit

On my system (OS X 10.5) I get the following output from that command:

% port deps pstoedit
Full Name: pstoedit @3.45
Runtime Dependencies: ghostscript
Library Dependencies: ImageMagick, plotutils, libpng, zlib

You could try installing the dependencies you generate via the deps command, or any of this list to see if it makes a difference.

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Thanks! deps responds as described, and some of these install, while others produce the same error. So, I imagine I should be recursing and repeating? – David Speyer Sep 8 '10 at 0:13
How about port rdeps xfig? That should recursively look up all the dependencies. Does that work. Did you already do a sudo port selfupdate to make sure you have the most recent ports tree? – Spiff Sep 8 '10 at 0:18
Spiff makes a good point - make sure you've run sudo port selfupdate recently, it might help to clear up a broken port which is causing the potential infinite loop. – dtlussier Sep 8 '10 at 14:12
up vote 1 down vote

This was most probably the recent bug caused by the xorg-libxcb Portfile. But a workaround has been applied. You should search on MacPorts Trac for such error messages first. The ticket #26387 tracks this problem and possible solutions.

From a user point of view, you don't need to do anything about this except updating your local Portfiles with this command:

sudo port selfupdate
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