"man port" not working?

[Charlie Kester]

On 8 Oct 2007, at 01:01 PM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:

>
> I see /sw in your path there. So I guess you have Fink installed  
> too. That's just asking for trouble. I recommend you use either  
> Fink or MacPorts, but not both. Completely remove the one you no  
> longer wish to use.
>
> I also see /usr/local in that path. Stuff in /usr/local can  
> interfere with MacPorts too. I recommend you remove everything  
> from /usr/local and use MacPorts to install whatever software you  
> need. If software you need is not in MacPorts, portfiles can be added.

If MacPorts were complete and more uptodate, this might be an  
acceptable answer.  But it isn't.

There are several packages where Fink is more than a few minor  
versions ahead of MacPorts, and some packages where Fink is a full  
major version ahead.  There are also packages which are only  
available via Fink.

Same goes for /usr/local.  There are lots of things which are easily  
portable to OS X (i.e., configure/make/make install), but don't exist  
in either Fink or MacPorts.

I was under the impression that MacPorts could co-reside with Fink  
and /usr/local.  Isn't that the point of using /opt/local?

Why would a user install a package via Fink, or build it himself and  
install it into /usr/local, rather than wait for a MacPort?  Bug  
fixes. Plugging security holes.  Features or apps needed today and  
not at some unknown time in the future.

If Ryan's advice above is really what the MacPorts community  
recommends, then I'm going to start ripping out every MacPorts  
package from my machines and download the tarfiles to build and  
install manually.  It sounds like you have a serious unsolved problem  
with compatibility.  If so, it seems to me that the best way for me  
to deal with that is to standardize on /usr/local.