MacPorts' Directory Layout Guideline or suggestion?

[markd at macports.org]

"js " <ebgssth at gmail.com> writes:
>I'm wondering if there's  any guideline or  suggestion that
>MacPorts port  creaters should  follow.
>
>apache2 installs its  conf  files in /opt/local/apache2/conf
>but apache's in /opt/local/etc/apache/conf.
>Is this a bug? or just lack of good guidelines?

A good question; here's just my $.02.  The thing to keep in mind are the
overall goals of the MacPorts project.  It isn't to make all the ports as
consistent as possible.  It is to make the ports as consistent as possible
as far as the things we need to touch.  The more we touch stuff an app's
Makefile is performs fine without sufficient justification, we end up with
so much customization in the portfile tree that it compromises the other
goals of the project -easy and quck upgrades being one.  The more we touch
Makesfiles needlessly, the more we commit ourselves to touching them again
down the road and this is time consuming.  And the more our ports behave
different from the FreeBSD and Gentoo ports collections.  Bottom line is
that we lean heavily upon the decisions of the developers upstream, unless
there is a compelling reason not to.  So probably in the case of Apache,
the inconsistency is a result of changing developer choices between
versions.  BTW, when we disagree with choices made by developers, we
should try to get them to change their defaults so the whole open source
community benefits, and we don't have to customize all our portfiles.  We
want to do that as little as possible.  Well that's my view; I hope that
helps answer your question.

There are general guidelines in the MacPorts guide (See MacPorts Internals
-> MacPorts File Hierarchy), but I think it pretty much restates the
general Unix guidelines.  http://geeklair.net/new_macports_guide/

Mark