selfupdate and readline support

[Shreevatsa R]

On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 11:38 PM, Ryan Schmidt <ryandesign at macports.org> wrote:
> I said then [1], and still say now, that we need a more general solution
> that makes MacPorts display a warning to the user if they install software
> in the prefix /usr/local. We have never supported the user installing
> software in the prefix /usr/local [2] and it causes problems in many more
> situations than this. MacPorts should actively inform users that they are
> doing things they should not, and how to correct them (even if that's only
> by providing a link to a FAQ entry or Guide section).
>
> [1]
> http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macports-users/2007-November/006982.html
>
> [2] http://trac.macports.org/ticket/15077
>

I don't think this is a reasonable policy for MacPorts to have.
/usr/local is the "standard" location for software manually installed
by the user. Are you suggesting that
(1) users should configure all their software with some other prefix, or
(2) they should not install anything at all outside of MacPorts?
Neither of them is a practical solution. There are application bundles
that *do* install to /usr/local, and it is impossible to use "just
MacPorts" because of the thousands of things that don't work:
http://trac.macports.org/report/1

The proper solution is for MacPorts to figure out a way of preventing
its ports from looking outside ${prefix} -- whether /usr/local or /usr
or any directory at all.