GSoC: Separation of Ports Build Process from Local Installation

[Matthew Seaman]

On 29/05/2019 10:56, Peter Pentchev wrote:
> Hmm, I could be wrong, but isn't ${LOCALBASE} supposed to be where
> ports find stuff*during the build*, and ${PREFIX} where they
> install the built files?  Of course, I haven't actually touched
> a FreeBSD ports build in years, so I might very likely be wrong.
> I also seem to remember a series of test port builds done a long
> time ago with a different value for LOCALBASE, specifically to catch
> ports that do not honor the policy in this regard.

No, you are correct.  The LOCALBASE setting is where the ports will look 
for build dependencies.  However, the problem here is there is no 
guarrantee that the LOCALBASE value will not somehow be compiled into a 
resulting package (eg. as RPATH for dynamically loading a shlib) so 
would also be needed for runtime dependencies.

Being able to build with a custom value of LOCALBASE and then install 
and run the resulting package onto a system using different value for 
PREFIX would be an interesting piece of work.  The applicability would 
be people that custom build their own ports, but who are for some reason 
unable or unwilling to set up some sort of clean-build environment. 
This does strike me as an awful lot of work to solve a perceived problem 
where we do already have some pretty good solutions in place, but not to 
everybodies' taste.

	Cheers,

	Matthew