When I do port installed, I get useless list of hundreds of items. However, only a handful of these are ports I actually installed first-hand. The rest are dependencies that I have no need to relate directly to.
Is there a way to list only the ports I actually installed, ie. those I typed in on the command line manually? Like a top level node list or installation history file or something?
MacPorts has the concept of requested and unrequested ports.
Try port installed requested.
See man 1 port for more information on 'requestedness' and pseudo-targets.