Installer should allow installation of macport in custom locations - for users without admin access

[Rainer Müller]

On 2010-07-29 11:57 , Mark Farnell wrote:
> Are there any way to make ports relocable?
> 
> In OS X, applications are placed in Foo.app

I see a lot of applications in /usr/bin.

> whereas shared libraries (Framework) and data are placed under /Library

There are many libraries in /usr/lib and lots of data in /usr/share.

> If Foo.app is in /Applications, then it will look at shared data in /Library
> 
> whereas
> 
> if Foo.app is in $(HOME)/Applications, then it will look at shared
> data in $HOME/Library

Isn't such data usually embedded inside the application bundle at
Contents/Resources/?

> So under OS X, applications are relocatable

No, application *bundles*, those special directories ending in .app,
ought to be relocatable. There are other binary files which you cannot
move around as you like.

> So are there any way to compile ports so that the binaries are
> relocatable (i.e. look at relative path)?

Software might hardcode the path they will look for shared data. You
would need to patch that to determine paths at runtime.

By default the linker writes the path to each library into the binary.
There are ways to change that later with install_name_tool, but that
requires to pass -headerpad_max_install_names to the linker.

While I am not saying it isn't possible when putting enough effort into
it, I don't think there is really a need for this feature. Users
installing to /opt/local can easily follow our documentation, our HOWTOs
or other instructions on the net.

Rainer