Install port without dependencies?

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Sep 23, 2010, at 08:51, Rainer Müller wrote:
> On 2010-09-23 13:30 , Joost Kremers wrote:
>> I'm running OS X 10.6 and have LaTeX installed through MacTeX (which is
>> essentially TeXLive). Now I'd like to install a programme called 'rubber', which
>> is available through MacPorts. TeXLive is a runtime dependency, but obviously I
>> have no interest in installing the texlive port, because I already have MacTeX.
>> 
>> Is there a way to install a port and have it ignore one of its dependencies?
>> Preferably in a persistant way, so that future upgrades won't try to install
>> texlive either?
> 
> There is no way to ignore dependencies, but they can be satisfied by
> other means than installing ports. In this case, rubber actually depends
> on bin:latex:texlive (see 'port -v info'). This means it only needs
> 'latex' anywhere in PATH and this dependency will be satisfied.
> 
> If I remember correctly, MacTeX is using /usr/texbin for the executables
> and was added to your PATH?
> 
> You can use MacTeX instead of texlive from MacPorts by adding this path
> to the front of the binpath setting in
> /opt/local/etc/macports/macports.conf. Then this path will be considered
> while searching for bin: dependencies and installing rubber should no
> longer try to install texlive from MacPorts.

Right. TeX is special like this; we let people choose to use MacTeX instead of TeXLive if they want. For other ports, you generally cannot satisfy their dependencies outside of MacPorts for the reasons explained in our FAQ:

http://trac.macports.org/wiki/FAQ#ownlibs