/usr/local question

Stephen Langer stephen.langer at nist.gov
Wed Apr 4 14:30:07 PDT 2012


On Apr 4, 2012, at 5:01 PM, Jan Stary wrote:

> What "other various installations", exactly?
> Nobody uses more then one port system on a given machine
> (not that know about any other beside macports and fink).
> So whatever the macports prefix, it will not stomp on
> any other port system's installations (or vice versa),
> because there is no other port system in use. That leaves
> - the MacOS isntallation as shipped by Apple
> - manual installations done by the user

I have at times installed both fink and macports on the same system, although I always move one of them aside (e.g., mv /sw /sw-save) before using the other.  It's nice to be able to check that my software will build against either macports or fink before distributing it to users.  Having all macports files sequestered in their own directory is extremely useful.

Aside from that objection, I agree with most of your points.  It's not feasible to expect that every package is available in macports.  Whether you like it or not, sometimes people will have to install something that hasn't been ported.  If they want to install it in a system-wide directory, so that it's easily used by many users, /usr/local is the obvious place to put it.   There isn't a problem unless they install something in /usr/local that's also provided (in an incompatible version) by macports.  That should be the users job to ensure.  Macports should warn the user about that, but imposing a blanket ban on /usr/local is a bad idea.

> Perhaps this is the right place to think Jeremy and Ryan and the others
> for making macports happen in the first place.

I agree with that, too.  Thanks!

 -- Steve


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