How to activate an older version of a port

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jan 14, 2013, at 18:24, Jerry wrote:

> On Jan 13, 2013, at 4:43 PM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
> 
>> On Jan 12, 2013, at 00:39, Jerry wrote:
>> 
>>> Since /opt/local is seen before /usr/local/ (which has automake 1.9 in it), I want to temporarily roll back macports automake to 1.11.3. I get this:
>> 
>> Note that having software installed in /usr/local is likely to cause you problems with MacPorts, which is why we do not support having software installed there.
>> 
>> https://trac.macports.org/wiki/FAQ#usrlocal
> 
> I've read this discussion before. I thought it was OK to have stuff in subdirectories of /usr/local but not OK to have stuff /usr/local directly. Is that not correct? I know this is a flamey topic so I won't say more.

Yes, having software installed into a prefix below /usr/local is fine. For example, the official MySQL binaries are (used to be?) distributed with a prefix like /usr/local/mysql-X.Y.Z; this is fine. But installing into prefix /usr/local (i.e. files installed into /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/include, /usr/local/lib) can cause problems.