portfile question concerning optional deps

[Dan Ports]

On Sat, Jul 16, 2011 at 09:24:53AM +0200, Marko K?ning wrote:
> The above doesn't mention that bin: or lib: would actually be satisfied with anything outside prefix. It reads as if it would only below the prefix.
> 
> So, what's correct now?

bin: dependencies search binpath, which by default contains only 
$prefix/bin, /usr/bin, /bin, and the associated sbin directories.

lib: dependencies search a hardcoded path, which (consulting the source
here) contains $prefix/lib, /usr/lib, /lib, some Framework directories,
and environment variables like DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH.

I think it's still quite reasonable to use these in most circumstances.
Although they do allow things outside $prefix, it's a limited set of
locations; the only thing they should normally match are
binaries/libraries from the OS/devtools. The exceptions, of course, are
if the user has modified the binpath -- which is not really supported
-- or has installed nonstandard things into /usr/bin -- which is even
less supported, and likely to cause problems elsewhere too.

Dan

-- 
Dan R. K. Ports              MIT CSAIL                http://drkp.net/