Ports to Include with MacPorts Installer Image

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jan 16, 2010, at 10:25, Jeremy Lavergne wrote:

>>> Have we considered bundling any packages with the MacPorts disk images that most packages use?
>> 
>> No, I don't think we've considered that. What would be the benefit? Ports aren't hard to compile the usual way...
> 
> Example: if zlib is required by 90% of the ports we have, we should go ahead and bundle it with the installer.

> I'm thinking zlib is likely to be one.

Probably. zlib also doesn't change often, which would be good for this application; if the dependency you bundle with MacPorts is updated often, like say sqlite3, then bundling it is pointless, because the user will likely be upgrading it right away anyway.

But zlib is also small and only takes seconds to build. We don't have any mechanism in place to allow ports to come pre-installed. I have a feeling it would take more time and effort to create all that infrastructure than it would save.