applications_dir under prefix (was: Re: Framework install location)

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Oct 13, 2008, at 03:05, nox wrote:

> Le 13 oct. 08 à 00:29, Ryan Schmidt a écrit :
>
>> On Oct 12, 2008, at 04:02, Anders F Björklund wrote:
>>
>>> The configure scripts used the /Applications and /Library locations
>>> (or ~/Applications and ~/Library) because that was the rule at the
>>> time,
>>> made it easier to integrate with things outside of MacPorts itself
>>> such
>>> as Xcode or Services. That applied to applications/frameworks/
>>> tclpackage.
>>>
>>> I would prefer prefix, myself...
>>
>> I don't know the implications of having the frameworks outside of /
>> Library/Frameworks (e.g. in ${prefix}/Library/Frameworks) but for
>> applications I thought the point was that the OS wouldn't know about
>> them (e.g. things like "open -a foo" wouldn't work unless foo.app was
>> somewhere under /Applications). Though testing this right now, I
>> can't reproduce that.
>>
>> If that is a problem, we could have MacPorts create a symlink at /
>> Applications/MacPorts pointing to ${prefix}/Applications/MacPorts if
>> one does not already exist (if installing as root). This would
>> satisfy the majority of users who have just a single installation,
>> but still work fine for those with multiple installations. Finally
>> there could be a configure switch to not make that symlink.
>
> Applications outside /Applications or ~ are not found by the system,
> so "open" and Finder won't be able to use them to open files.

As I said, I was unable to verify that. I moved my /Applications/ 
MacPorts outside /Applications and "open -a" was still able to find  
them. Maybe they were cached in some way. Maybe a reboot would have  
made them unavailable again. Can someone test this? And then, test  
whether placing a symlink in /Applications/MacPorts pointing to where  
the apps are allows it to work again?

> To install frameworks inside $prefix/Library/Frameworks we will need
> to tell xcodebuild to search frameworks there when using the xcode
> portgroup.