Added support in MacPorts base to set PATH and MANPATH automatically in Leopard

[Randall Wood]

On 29 Nov 2007, at 20:12, Kirk Kelsey wrote:

> On Nov 29, 2007, at 7:43 PM, James Berry wrote:
>>
>> The /etc/[man]paths.d/macports approach is equivalent, and cleaner  
>> than hitting the /etc/[man]paths files. read path_helper(8).
>>
>> James
>
> Equivalent in that they are both used by path_helper, but not in  
> terms of how. /etc/paths is processed before /etc/paths.d/macports  
> and would allow for /opt/local to be placed earlier in the  
> environment variable.
>
> If the concern is just to get port-installed software to be  
> accessible with minimal fuss, then I'd agree that a /etc/paths.d/ 
> macports file is a great option, but being able to override the  
> default software seems like a really big plus.

Adding /etc/[man]paths.d/macports seems to me to be the least  
intrusive manner of getting ${prefix} into the user's path, although  
not where we really want it to be. So maybe we should add the /etc/ 
[man]paths.d/macports with our paths and then provide users with a  
tool in ${prefix}, call it something like macports-user-env that a  
user can use to prepend/append/remove ${prefix} to/from their  
personal paths, or to setup calls against ${prefix}/bin/init.[c]sh a  
la Fink.

Note that my understanding of this issue is only from this  
discussion, that I do not use 10.5, and that I think that a little  
extra work upfront on our part could go a long way later.

Randall Wood
rhwood at mac.com
http://shyramblings.blogspot.com

"The rules are simple: The ball is round. The game lasts 90 minutes.  
All the
rest is just philosophy."