how to maintain multiple active versions of a port (e.g. octave)?

[Ken Cunningham]

> 
> One last question … can you give me a quick idea of how much work would be involved in me attempting to locally implement the first approach you mentioned (different ports for different versions of octave). That is, starting with the files for the 3.8.2 revision of the octave port, what would be involved in creating a local octave38 port that could be installed simultaneously with the regular, current octave port? Am I crazy to attempt this?
> 


I see octave is a reasonably complex portfile. Not easy to fiddle with, I would think.

There is the possibility of having separate macports installations, under different prefixes. You could set your PATH to the one you want to use.

or alternatively you could swap /opt/local macports installations in and out (moving /opt/local to /opt/local-octave38, say, and then installing /opt/local for octave 4). Watch out for anything that might go into ${applications-dir} with this approach, if you try it. Might have to swap that too.

you'd have to keep your wits about you, but that might work to have multiple octave versions to work on one machine.

Both those only let you use one octave version at a time, but at least they are on the same machine.

K