What is MacPort ?

the MacPorts Project is an open-source community initiative to design an easy-to-use system for compiling, installing and upgrading either command-line, X11 or Aqua based open-source software on the OS X operating system. To that end, it provides the command line drive MacPorts software package under a BSD 3 clause lincese, and through it easy access to thousands of ports that greatly simplify the task or compiling and installing open-source software on the mac. 

The Macports provide single software tree that attempts to track the latest release of every software title(port) it distributes without splitting the into stable vs unstable branches, targeting mainly the current latest OS X release and the immediately previous two (OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and 10.7 Lion). There are around 19951 ports in the tree distributed among 83 different categories, and more are being added on regular basis. 

Macport is conceptually divided into two parts, the infrastructure, known as MacPorts base, and the set of available ports. A Macport is a set of specifications contained in a Portfile that define an application, its characteristics, and any files or special instructions required to install it. This allows a developer to use a single command to tell MacPorts to automatically download, compile and install applications and libraries. 

Installing and running MacPort require Xcode command line utilities. Below are few main commands that can help developer 

sudo port self update =>  Updates the port files to the latest version. This is much essential especially for the application that are getting chagned frequently. If the port file is old and the actual vendor file is new, this will result in checksum errors unless the port is self updated to latest version. 

port version will give the latest version. 

To uninstall and install the macport, do the below. This should not be ideally required in most of the case, but depending on the situation, one may have to do this hard step as well. 

sudo port -fp uninstall installed

This doesn't remove some of the directories though removes most of them. To remove in its entirelyeity do the below 

sudo rn -rf /opt/local 

/Applications/DarwinPorta

/Applications/Macports 

/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macporta.*

/Library/Receipts/DarwinPorta*.pkg

/Library/Receipts/Macporta*.png 

/Library/StartupItems/DarwinPortsStartup

/Library/Tcl/drawports/1.0

/Library/Tcl/macports 1/0

~/.macports 

if one want to enable debug during seldupdate, below can be used

sudo port -d selfupdate 

if want to update the Macports only and do not the port files, below can be done 

sudo port -d selfupdate --nosync

The Port Doctor. This command check all the possible environmental problems in the running machine

port doctor 

Port reclaim uninstalls any unused ports etc 

port list 

this lists all the ports available. The list is very very long, instead can use the port search 

Some of the common formats for search are: 

port search --name --glob 'php*'

port search --name --line --glob 'php*' 

port search --name --line --regex '^php\d*$'

port search red

Checking dépendances of a port e.g.  

port deps apache2 

Variants of a port 

port variants apache2 

Port installation with debug  

sudo port -v install apache2 

Cleaning port 

sudo port clean

Uninstalling a port 

sudo port uninstall libcomerr 

Port Contents 

This displays the list of all files that have been installed by a given port. 

port contentes xorg-renderproto 

display all installed ports 

port installed 

Check outdated ports 

port outdated 

Port upgrade

sudo port upgrade outdated 

Checking port dependancies 

port dépendances openssl 

references:

https://guide.macports.org/