Manual install

[paul beard]

On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 2:42 PM, <
macports-users-request at lists.macosforge.org> wrote:

>
> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 14 May 2008 12:39:48 +0200
> From: Anders F Bj?rklund <afb at macports.org>
> Subject: Re: Manual install
> To: Simon Wheatley <lists at simonwheatley.co.uk>
> Cc: liste gtk <macports-users at lists.macosforge.org>
> Message-ID: <5FDE443C-70C7-4EAC-85C8-D2B01B94515F at macports.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed
>
> Simon Wheatley wrote:
>
> > Is it possible to point MacPorts at a downloaded "package" of some
> > kind and say "install that"? Something similar to Debian's 'dpkg -i'?
>
> Not at the moment... You can build a package (pkg/rpm/deb), but then
> it doesn't integrate with the already installed ports and registry
> and so goes "outside" or parallel to what port knows about. Or you
> can build an archive (tgz/tbz/tlz), but then you have to download and
> move it to the right directory yourself and make sure port "base" is
> already installed etc.
>
> Preferably you would use something like 'apt-get install', and that
> would download and install the binary package ? 'port -b' is supposed
> to do that, but only works with local packages yet. There is a ticket
> to implement remote archives, but it's rather stale... http://
> trac.macports.org/ticket/8571 and also http://trac.macports.org/
> ticket/10919
>
>
Just out of curiousity, what is involved in making this work? Assuming I
have the package installed and working on machine A, I could use "port
contents foo" and pass that to zip or tar. That gives me all the files in a
port neatly stowed in an archive. If I add the receipt file, is there a
registry that reads and manages that or is it just the text files on disk?

The reason I ask is that a. it would be very useful to have this feature,
especially on systems without a lot of horsepower (given the high degree of
standardization on this hardware, why compile anything yourself, if a
compile farm exists to do that?) and b. I have done the steps above to get
around packages that don't build, and I wonder how much cruft that
introduces.


-- 
Paul Beard / www.paulbeard.org/
<paulbeard at gmail.com/paulbeard at gmail.com>
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