Question concerning redundant package installation

[Rainer Müller]

Charlie Sharpsteen wrote:
> I have been using macports to install programs that have been a little
> testy to compile myself and have been very satisfied so far. However, I
> just installed latex2rtf and port downloads and installed a rather large
> number of packages including some of the GNU toolchain, perl, and an
> outdated tex-live distribution.

texlive follows the OpenBSD texlive release and that is still at version
2007. So it is the latest and greatest we can get without creating many
packages ourselves.

> Much of this all ready exists on my computer and I am a little concerned
> about managing conflicts.

That's exactly the point. As MacPorts installs everything to /opt/local,
there won't be any conflicts with system provided libraries.

> Is there any way to have port preferentially
> link against libraries outside of /opt/local instead of downloading
> redundant copies?

As MacPorts installs newer versions in most cases, I would not see this
as redundant.

Rainer