Best Practices: creating alternate user account to use MacPorts in?

[Nick]

I'll try these options, so far during 'port install xorg' the installation
fails requiring root privileges to complete installation of 'xinit.

On Wed, Jul 2, 2025 at 7:40 PM Dave Allured - NOAA Affiliate via
macports-users <macports-users at lists.macports.org> wrote:

> Nick, I am glad you figured out before I had to type too much.   ;-)
>
> Please refer to:
> https://guide.macports.org/#installing.macports.source.multiple (section
> 2.2.4) and observe several rules.  In particular it looks like you are
> still missing *--with-applications-dir=XXX* and*--without-startupitems*.
>
> Also on my controlled Mac where I do not have any admin privileges, I do
> not use *--with-install-user* or *--with-install-group*.  I simply run
> configure while logged in as the desired user and group.
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 2, 2025 at 5:11 PM Nick <atod101101 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Found the issue, my PATH was pointing to an older macports binary which
>> used different macports.conf!  No help required now.
>>
>> On Wed, Jul 2, 2025 at 6:57 PM Nick <atod101101 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> My proposal here is to create a new user account for macports and
>>> development work.  Logged into this account 'mp0' I tried:
>>>
>>> ./configure --with-no-root-privileges --prefix=${HOME]/mp-install
>>> --with-install-user=mp0 --with-install-group=mp0
>>> make
>>> make install
>>>
>>> However, now when I try to install a port I get an error that macports
>>> has insufficient privileges to write to the install directory.  I can touch
>>> files in this directory without any error.
>>>
>>> Does anyone have suggestions on resolving this?
>>>
>>> I created the account using dscl, not sure if there is something that I
>>> should be aware of doing this.
>>>
>>> Thanks!
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jul 2, 2025 at 5:16 PM Nick <atod101101 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> What are best practices in sandboxing MacPorts to a non-admin user
>>>> account and still retaining the ability to use XQuartz?
>>>>
>>>> For instance, I would like to invoke all applications as a certain
>>>> user, without administrative privileges, however at the same time still be
>>>> able to use XQuartz graphically from my privileged account. I was hoping
>>>> XQuartz could be installed specific to this non-admin user as well.  Unsure
>>>> if such isolation is possible.
>>>>
>>>> I'm doing some sandbox testing.  I see a 'macports' user, however in my
>>>> first installation many of the files in /opt/local are owned by root.  I
>>>> was hoping to install a specific to a user account for all MacPorts.
>>>>
>>>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.macports.org/pipermail/macports-users/attachments/20250702/dced01ad/attachment.htm>