[MacPorts] #47755: Broken symlink left by select code when selected port is deactivated causes poppler and other ports using aclocal to fail during configuration.

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jun 23, 2015, at 4:13 PM, Christopher David Ramos wrote:
> 
> 
>> 
>> There is no inherent conflict between MacPorts and any given
>> software downloaded with git. Rather, there is (apparently, from what
>> you've told us) a conflict between MacPorts and the specific software
>> you downloaded with git, but that conflict would have been present 
>> regardless of how you downloaded the software; it has nothing at all 
>> to do with git. Git is just a program that lets you download things. 
>> It has no knowledge of whether those things you download are going
>> to conflict with other parts of your system.
> 
> You are paraphrasing what I just said.

Not intentionally.

> 
> My understanding is that Macport ports install there own libraries under
> the path prefix "/opt/local/" so as to prevent conflicts with and
> reliance out of date Apple libraries.

Well yes. I mean, MacPorts needs to install itself *somewhere*, some prefix. Bad choices for prefix would be /usr (that's where Apple installs stuff) and /usr/local (that's where compilers look for dependencies by default, and is where users expect to be able to install software manually). A good choice is therefore anywhere else. We chose /opt/local.

> Are you saying that it was only a
> fluke that a git project would have built files into Macports created
> directories?

Yes, that is what I was saying, where, again, by "git project", you mean "some software project that just so happens to do its development in a git repository". The use of git is incidental to the problem.


I was assuming that you had already resolved the original problem from the ticket referenced in the subject line, by removing the now-broken symlink(s) "port select wxwidgets" had created on your system (if you haven't done that yet, then you should do that now), and were encountering a new problem specific to this software you downloaded and built.