Yes. I’ve already tried the “build_arch” variable in macports.conf. What happens is the fetch never begins:
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Same basic outcome of an unfulfilled fetch:
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No, you're conflating a few things.
When you set the build_arch, MacPorts CORRECTLY realizes that you don't want to download a prebuilt i386 binary. That is good. That is working properly.
Then MacPorts tries to start a download of the source code for ncurses so it can start building it. That is good. That is working properly.
But your download doesn't work. That is not good. That is most likely not MacPorts fault -- it just asks the system CURL library to download the file. But the file is not downloading...
Does curl work? Can it download anything on that system? Does this do anything (using a real URL):
curl -O
http://myserver.com/download/my/file.zip
MacPorts can properly drive the ancient libcurl.dylib that comes with Tiger PPC, so whatever libcurl.dylib is on the 10.6 PPC system probably is new enough, but I don't know if it actually is a consistent piece of software that works.
MacPorts can be built against another, newer libcurl of your own construction (I do it all the time). You configure it to use a different curl like this:
./configure --with-curlprefix=/path/to/my/curl
So we have some options if the curl on your system is not working, or not working with MacPorts.
You could build curl on 10.5 Leopard PPC, and copy it over to 10.6 PPC, in a pinch.
You can also skip MacPorts' downloading of files and do it manually yourself, by the way. MacPorts puts it's downloaded source files in a certain folder in a certain directory, and before it goes to the internet to download source, it first checks to see if it already has it. SO if you put it in the right place, having obtained it by any method you wish, then MacPorts will just use that, and skip trying to download it. Might come in handy to get bootstrapped.