Is there any value to packages? [was Re: Why no binaries?]

[Anders F Björklund]

paul beard wrote:

> Is there a status document that addresses where things stand on 
> efforts like this? I haven't been all that successful at building 
> packages within port (port pkg foo where foo is something i would 
> rather not build again on a second machine). I think I may have 
> resorted to taking the output of "port contents" and wrapping it in a 
> tar or zip command, but that doesn't add any of the magic of receipts 
> and the rest of the stuff that makes a ports system worth using. 

In the recent documentation*, it has been separated between "archives" 
(tgz,tbz,xar,etc) which are stored versions of the destroot that are 
used *within* the MacPorts system and "packages" (pkg,rpm,deb,etc) 
which are packaged for use *outside* the MacPorts system. Both of these 
two are called "binaries".

Both include the same software, though.

--anders

* http://geeklair.net/new_macports_guide/#using.binaries