Distributing binaries in macports

[Chris Jones]

Jeremy Lavergne wrote:
>> I'm not sure if there is a way so that I can directly install binaries
>> from macports. Right now, macports compiles packages during
>> installation, which may take too long to finish and take too much cpu
>> time. Would you please let me know if there is such an option
>> available? Thanks!
> 
> MacPorts will download pre-built binaries if they're available (e.g.,
> they're built, the license permits binary distribution).
> 
> If you never see attempts made to fetch from packages.macports.org, you
> might want to check your macports.conf to ensure none of the
> archive-related settings are being set to something outside of the
> defaults.

Also note binary tarballs are only available for OSX 10.6 at the moment. 
If you are using Leopard or older, or Lion, you are out of luck. I 
believe work is in progress to get Lion tarballs available (very much 
waiting for these myself), but for older OS X versions, my bet is 
binaries tarballs will not available (as MacPorts officially supports 
the last two releases of OSX, so currently 10.6 and 10.7).

Chris