Problem with Macports, homebrew, and ghostscript

[Art McGee]

My trick to having a harmonious multi-package manager system is to have a
hierarchy, in which MacPorts is where the majority of packages are built,
and the others are only used to fill in the gaps.

For example, Free Pascal. MacPorts doesn't have it. I could spend the time
creating a port, but I want it now. So, I used Fink to install it. Problem
solved.

Also key is to make sure that MacPorts comes first in the $PATH, $MANPATH,
and $INFOPATH.

I haven't had any problems, but another person's mileage may vary.

Art

On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 2:45 PM, Brandon Allbery <allbery.b at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 4:12 PM, Art McGee <amcgee at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> They keep their environment segregated from the rest of the system, and
>> because of this, even though any MacPorts admin will strongly and
>> vehemently advise against even trying it, they can work in concert with
>> each other.
>
>
> Mostly. What you're missing is that configure scripts are pernicious, and
> even with the most careful vetting and editing they will occasionally glom
> onto stuff under /sw/lib and incorporate it into a MacPorts build, leading
> to bizarre problems when you upgrade Fink later. (Yes, I've seen this
> happen.) Note that it can't usually happen in the other direction unless
> you're in the unusual habit of building Fink stuff from source instead of
> installing the prebuilt debs. (But it's also possible for stuff using
> dynamically loaded libraries to slip its leash and spot libs under
> /opt/local/lib, with similarly bizarre errors as the result.)
>
> Both of these are more likely if you're also committing another cardinal
> sin, namely setting $DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH or $DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH. But
> then, the former has the strong potential to break your entire system in
> "interesting" ways, and the latter is only a little bit safer --- so just
> don't do it except as a workaround for broken programs, and in that case
> use a script wrapper around those programs rather than risking breaking
> everything in order to make it happy.
>
> --
> brandon s allbery kf8nh                               sine nomine
> associates
> allbery.b at gmail.com
> ballbery at sinenomine.net
> unix, openafs, kerberos, infrastructure, xmonad
> http://sinenomine.net
>
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