"man port" not working?

[Jordan K. Hubbard]

On Oct 8, 2007, at 3:04 PM, Charlie Kester wrote:

> 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.

Ryan is being conservative.  If you have enough skill to juggle  
multiple paths, know which of many possible libraries you wish to link  
with (those in /usr/local/lib, /sw/lib or /opt/local/lib) then they co- 
exist just fine.  In other words, the technology supports co-existence  
and there is no need to be as alarmist as you were in the preceding  
paragraph.  The only limitation is you, the user, and how much  
software scattered across various prefixes you can keep straight  
simultaneously.  Experience has shown users to be somewhat limited in  
this regard, hence Ryan's guidelines, but if you're the exception to  
the general rule then by all means "go for it."

- Jordan