/usr/local question

[Jeremy Lavergne]

> I use Linux extensively for my servers and Macs when I'm trying to be a human. /usr/local has been around for quite a while in the *nix world (it's even in the default $PATH), and I use it a little on the Macs. I can't think of what the problem is -- (seems to) work fine here :-)

I don't see /usr/local in my system's default for $PATH, either on 10.6 or 10.7.

/usr/local is horrible because it takes precedence over everything else on your system. As was pointed out:
 * some software (especially auto* tools from Gnu) look in /usr/local as a default location
 * gcc considers /usr/local to be a standard system directory, causing (at least) the include directory to be unable to appear early in the list of include directories, and hence causing MacPorts-installed items to be difficult to use properly for items which need them (where another version is installed elsewhere, like/usr/X11R6)

This means incorrect libraries and headers that magically find their way in there via other installers will be used instead of the software that was actually intended. Incompatible software (e.g. ppc on x86_64) might be installed there and you can see why that would break things.

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/pkcs7-signature
Size: 8796 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macports-users/attachments/20120404/c52b2bc8/attachment.bin>