Two different copies of MacPorts on the same system?

[Rainer Müller]

On 2013-07-01 07:12, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
> 
> On Jul 1, 2013, at 00:06, Blair Zajac wrote:
> 
>> Yes, definitely.  We've had 3 different copies of MacPorts installed at the same time.
>>
>> I always set --prefix=$PREFIX --with-tclpackage=$PREFIX/lib/tcl/macports to ensure that each copy installs all its files into its own prefix.
> 
> So, first, in case it's not obvious, you'll need to compile MacPorts from source. The pre-compiled installer package is fixed to the /opt/local prefix.
> 
> Besides setting --prefix and --with-tclpackage to different values from your normal MacPorts install, you also need a different --applications_dir and --frameworks_dir. I use $PREFIX/Applications and $PREFIX/Library/Frameworks respectively.

http://guide.macports.org/#installing.macports.source.multiple

Although --with-tclpackage isn't mentioned in the guide. I guess it does
not matter as the port command itself loads the packages from an
absolute path and ignores the symlink. It would only make a difference
when running a command such as 'package reuqire macports' from tclsh
directly.

> I recommend you set "startupitem_type none" in macports.conf of your secondary installation(s), otherwise you'll have trouble activating ports that install startup items if you already have them installed in your primary installation.
> 
> The dbus port is unique and does not use that setting. The workaround is to install the dbus port without its startupitem variant, in your secondary installation(s).

This is a good hint that's missing in the guide...

Rainer