Octave port

[Bryan Blackburn]

On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 09:14:07AM -0500, Robert Fong-tom said:
[...]
>>
> Thanks for this excellent tutorial.
> Under what conditions would one use "portinstalltype direct" vs  
> "portinstall image"?
> Also will ports done under "portinstalltype image" recognize ports done 
> under "portsinstalltype direct" if the latter is a dependency of the 
> former?

One isn't a dependency of the other, they are simply two different methods
of how port can install software.  With direct, it simply installs directly
into ${prefix} (eg, /opt/local/bin/myprogram); this method means you can
only have one version/variant set of a given port installed at a time.  With
image, everything installs into ${prefix}/var/macports/software/ then one of
those is made 'active' which means you have have multiple versions and/or
variants installed at once, but only one active (which is what you see under
just ${prefix}, like /opt/local/bin/myprogram).

For example, I have three versions of the autoconf port installed:

$ port installed autoconf
The following ports are currently installed:
  autoconf @2.61_0
  autoconf @2.62_0
  autoconf @2.63_0 (active)

If I need to regenerate something using 2.61, all I have to do is deactivate
the current one and activate 2.61, now /opt/local/bin/autoconf is that
version.

Image mode is the default and usually preferred; unless you're running a
system which is inefficient with hard links (older Mac OS X, for example),
there really isn't much advantage to using direct.  But if one were to
switch, it would be best to do so before any ports have been installed.

Bryan