hosting an internal macports server with binaries

[Paul Guyot]

On May 8, 2007, at 11:28 AM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:

> On May 7, 2007, at 17:39, Rick Gigger wrote:
>
>> Is it possible to have an internal macports mirror that also  
>> contains binaries, so I can compile all the ports I need once and  
>> install them on several boxes instead of re-compiling everything  
>> on every single box?
>
> That functionality does not exist.
>
> One small thing you could do: after you install all the ports you  
> want on one system, you can copy the /opt/local/var/db/dports/ 
> distfiles directory from that machine to another machine where you  
> want to install ports. That way the second machine will not need to  
> download the distribution files again. However, it will still need  
> to compile and install the software itself.
>
> You could attempt to copy other parts of /opt/local to the other  
> machine as well. I don't know how well that would work. Certainly,  
> the machines would have be set up virtually identically in other  
> respects -- same processor architecture to be sure, same exact OS  
> version, same OS updates installed, same X11.
>
> It is an eventual goal of MacPorts to provide binaries of the  
> ports, rather than make everyone compile them themselves. However,  
> I estimate we're still a long way away from anything resembling  
> that kind of functionality.

I believe this functionality exists, on the contrary. It's called  
archive. You enable it in ports.conf:

portarchivemode		yes

Then all compiled ports are stored in /opt/local/var/db/dports/ 
packages/darwin/{powerpc,intel}/

There is a limitation, though. The archives are matched against the  
architecture (powerpc/intel), but not against the version of the  
system. If you build powerpc archives on a 10.3.9, you should not  
copy them over to a 10.4.9 box.

However, this functionality is broken in 1.4.3. This bug was fixed  
three weeks ago, but the people in charge here think we should not  
make too often releases, so you'll have to use trunk or wait for the  
fix.

Paul