/opt/local/macports/software

[Vincent Habchi]

Salut Akim ! Hi Ryan!

> I'm talking about removing the copy kept in that directory at the
> end of the process.

I suppose this is a leftover from the time when Internet bandwidth was unreliable and expensive, and it was well worth keeping a local copy than to trust a flaky remote server or a rickety connexion.

Personally, I’m in the same case as Akim. What I do is that I regularly backup the contents of the directory on some external USB drive (in fact, I even do it twice, one manually and one automatically through Time Machine) and then if ever I get struck in a mire, I restore it.

But I admit it is not very useful nowadays. It should be optional, at least when the version installed is the default one, i.e. the binary can be re-downloaded verbatim from the server (not a bespoken version with various variants set). 

Similarly, is there a way to disable the storing of the source files in …/distfiles?

Cheers! (À bientôt Akim!)
Vincent

PS: Maybe it would be nice to be able to specify alternate directories for archives, so that one could precisely backup (or move) the directory on some external disk, and then restore from it, if need be.