MacPorts installation on a separate partition

[Joshua Root]

On 28164-7-23 05:59 , Michelle Gill wrote:
> Dear MacPorts Users,
> 
> With the forthcoming release of Lion, I am considering moving my MacPorts installation onto a separate partition when I perform my usual fresh installation of the new operating system. I haven't seen this topic addressed in much detail in the archives of this list, so I am requesting comments and/or advice from others who have attempted such a task.
> 
> 
> 
> General feedback is welcome, but there are two questions in which I am specifically interested:
> 
> * Was the location of MacPorts changed during installation or was the default MacPorts installation moved from /opt/local to a secondary partition which was then linked to /opt/local? If the latter was done, was a symbolic link created from /opt/local to the second partition[1] or was the partition mounted at /opt/local using /etc/fstab or whatever Mac OS X is using these days for static mountpoints? (I have a Linux background and can't recall at the moment if Mac OS X uses something different.)

Having one of the components of your prefix be a symlink doesn't work
well, because it means that normalised paths (a) look completely
different even for paths that otherwise don't involve any links, and (b)
don't look like they're in the prefix. For example /opt/local/foo
becomes /Volumes/something/else/foo when you normalise it.

Mounting a partition at /opt/local would probably work a lot better. But
as Ryan said, just setting the prefix to /Volumes/something/else in the
first place is easier.

> * How does MacPorts handle hard links to the main filesystem, e.g. to "/Applications/MacPorts/Python 2.6/Python Launcher.app," when it is located on a separate partition? 

It doesn't, of course. If hardlinking fails, symlinking is tried. The
hardlinks are actually gone in 2.0 BTW.

> [1] It seems there was an issue associated with creating a symbolic link to /opt/local, but the issue is marked as fixed: http://trac.macports.org/ticket/21082

Sure, that particular issue was fixed. I'd be very surprised if there
aren't more. 'port provides' springs to mind as something that starts by
normalising the paths it's given.

- Josh