problems installing php (php5-spl) with portmaster

[Tom Worster]

On 11/1/10 9:14 PM, "John Levine" <johnl at iecc.com> wrote:

> 
>> portupgrade.  However, I just unregistered php5-spl, because its no longer
>> necessary.  I believe php5-spl and php5-pcre are now integrated into PHP-5.3
>> by default.
> 
> Yes and no.  pcre depends on the separate pcre package, and php will fail
> in baffling ways is your pcre is too old.
> 
> The maintainer of the php port is aware of this but has declined both
> to make a one-line change to the Makefile to use the bundled pcre
> package, or an alternate one-line change to document the version
> dependency.

gosh!

is there a test i can run to see if my pcre is going to fail in any baffling
ways?