Installing without root privileges: what about /Applications/MacPorts?

[Bryan Blackburn]

On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 03:13:36PM +0100, Michael Williams said:
> Hi,
> 
> I think I've successfully installed MacPorts without root privileges.  
> I installed from source using:
> 
> ./configure --prefix=$HOME/.macports --with-install-user=$USER --with- 
> install-group=staff --with-tclpackage=~/Library/Tcl
> 
> (this was based on my interpretation of https://trac.macports.org/wiki/gsoc08-privileges) 
> .
> 
> However, I've run into trouble with a couple of packages. These errors  
> boil down to:
> 
> Error: Target org.macports.activate returned: can't create directory "/ 
> Applications/MacPorts": permission denied
> 
> Is there any way to change this directory to, say, ~/Applications/ 
> MacPorts or is it hard-coded?
> 

Which source-based install are you using?  Running off trunk allows you to
change the location of the Applications and Frameworks install locations by
editing etc/macports/macports.conf and setting:

applications_dir    /path/to/Applications
frameworks_dir      /path/to/Library/Frameworks

If you're running from 1.6 source, then you can't do this...Also note that
the GSoC stuff you were looking into is on its own branch still, not on the
trunk.

> p.s. if anyone knows mutt and MacPorts well, I have another package  
> problem which I think it mutt-related rather than MacPorts, but  
> comments welcome: http://groups.google.com/group/mailing.unix.mutt-users/browse_thread/thread/49b65590cb94eea5#
> 

It looks like mutt would need to have its install routines patched a bit to
maybe ignore an error when the chgrp fails, though that may be a bad thing
to do do the base mutt, so perhaps only in MacPorts.

Bryan


> Thanks,
> -- Mike Williams