/usr/local question

[Daniel J. Luke]

On Apr 4, 2012, at 5:01 PM, Jan Stary wrote:
> Using /opt/local as the default prefix is an attempt
> to save the user from himself,

[snip]

There are lots of good reasons to use a $prefix other than /usr/local

If you care, you can probably find all of the reasoning in the mailing list archives (hint: a long long time ago, /usr/local was the default prefix).

It seems to make you mad that you "can't" use /usr/local ...

you actually can if you really want to (I ran that way for a long time), but there's not really a good reason to. I think there's an autoconf check there now that "prevents" you from doing ./configure --prefix=/usr/local with the source you get (but if you can't figure out how to get around that, you _really_ shouldn't be trying to do it). Don't expect help from others here if you decide to run that way, though.

[snip]

> (*) Yes, the stuff under /usr/local will be used then.
> That's why the user installed it in there; because
> that's what he "actually intended".

You haven't seen the number of times people open tickets saying "this port is _broken_" because they have some broken header or library installed in /usr/local

>> This might be overkill, but have you considered adding code to your scripts
>> to mv /usr/local to /usr/localqw (and back at the end)?
>> Or maybe just the lib dir?
> 
> Thus crippling all my manual installations,
> such as the backup cronjob script that was about to run,
> (before the electricity dies out an hour from now)?

That was offered as a solution to having stuff in /usr/local that is breaking some port you are trying to build. If you know what you are doing, you can have stuff in /usr/local without too many issues (and you can fix things if/when they break).

If you can't figure out how to make things work, then that is a simple workaround. If you don't like it, I'm sure you can hire someone to figure things out for you instead ;-)

> Perhaps this is the right place to think Jeremy and Ryan and the others
> for making macports happen in the first place. I hope this comes over
> as politely as it is intended. I genuinely do think that /usr/local
> would be a better prefix.

it's not.

> Please point to where I am wrong,
> and please be very specific and give examples.


please see the mailing list archives.

--
Daniel J. Luke                                                                   
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