Some of those will have been required to build other ports (such as automake or bison). If you don't use them directly, you may not need them...until you update or install a port that needs them to build, in which case reinstalling them would happen automatically, but slow that down.
It'd probably be a good idea to do the setrequested bit at least for all those you know you want, even if there are plenty you don't know one way or the other. For the ones you don't think you want, you could always deactivate them, run a port rev-upgrade, and see if anything breaks. If not, you can probably remove them (although again, they may well get reinstalled at some future update). I think that'd be reasonably safe, although probably unnecessary - assuming ports properly identify what the depend on (they may not all be perfect), you should get a warning if you try to uninstall something that's currently needed. If you just want to free up some space (but not necessarily all possible space), how about sudo port uninstall inactive and unrequested That would just get rid of older versions of those. You could also just remove all the inactive ports, but occasionally one wants to revert something if there's a problem. > On May 3, 2020, at 17:43, Michael Newman via macports-users > <macports-users@lists.macports.org> wrote: > >> On May 3, 2020, at 21:28, Ryan Schmidt <ryandes...@macports.org >> <mailto:ryandes...@macports.org>> wrote: >> >> Look at the output of "port installed unrequested". If you see any port in >> that list that you actually do want, indicate that by running "sudo port >> setrequested thePortName". > > This is easier said than done. > > The output of port installed unrequested has 461 items; most of which I don't > recognize. Lynx is there and I know I want that. But the first port listed is > a52dec. I don't know what that is, or what it does or whether or not I want > it. I also see atk, automake, bison, harfbuzz, and many others which mean > nothing to me. > > Sure, I can do some research to figure out what each of these does, but then > I will still have no idea whether or not I want them. Did I request some in > the distant past? Am I still using them? No idea. > > It seems to be a very daunting task. > > >
