pre-pending of PATH by macports: normal conflicts?

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Feb 13, 2008, at 11:49, Brian Barnes wrote:

> I noticed the following today:
>
> nell:/private/etc barnes$ locate periodic | grep bin
> /opt/local/bin/periodic
> /opt/local/var/macports/software/openmotif/2.3.0_2/opt/local/bin/ 
> periodic
> /opt/premp/bin/periodic
> /opt/premp/var/macports/software/openmotif/2.3.0_2/opt/local/bin/ 
> periodic
> /usr/sbin/periodic
> nell:/private/etc barnes$ sudo which periodic
> /opt/local/bin/periodic
>
> this is, of course, due to the prepending of $PATH by macports  
> (1.6.0) in .profile:
>
> # Your previous .profile  (if any) is saved as .profile.mpsaved
> # Setting the path for MacPorts.
> export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH
>
> I believe the 'periodic' commands of openmotif and /usr/sbin are  
> extremely different ;).   Is this sort of thing known/expected?   
> Are there other conflicts with system commands?   Or is this  
> perhaps an openmotif port bug?  Just curious.

It is usually desired that things installed with MacPorts should  
replace things provided by the OS, because usually the thing you  
install with MacPorts is a newer version of the thing provided by the  
OS. It is unfortunate that openmotif apparently provides a binary of  
the same name as a system binary but with a totally different  
purpose. Perhaps you could convince the developers of openmotif, or  
the maintainer of the openmotif port, to install this binary under a  
different name instead.