What's a "good" way to handle installation of conflicting ports?

[Garrett Cooper]

On Feb 17, 2008, at 11:52 AM, David Wolfskill wrote:

> I've been asked to come up with at least an interim approach --
> that can be implemented within a few days -- to allow the SAs at
> my new job to install conflicting ports on the same machine.

[...]

> The catalyst for the exercise is that we have some pools of machines
> for developers to use; some of the developers wish to use
> editors/xemacs; some wish to use editors/emacs -- on the same machine.
> (Given the requirement, it's OK for the affected folks to need to  
> adjust
> search, library, and man paths.)

My suggestion is to determine what the most common set of ports are in  
your group, set that as the mainstream config, then for anyone who  
ventures outside of the norm, setup local ports and jails to fix that  
little issue.

NFS'ed directories with multiple copies with version tags (prefixes)  
corresponding to the binary build as well as the linking libs, and  
possibly scripts to setup the environment / jail might be the best way  
to go.

When it all boils down to it though you should (once you get enough IT  
staff on-board) standardize a given setup and once things are standard  
basically require that all individuals can be supported by IT or can  
self-support their own machines if necessary. It's just too difficult  
to manage a lot of machines where there are a large number of unknowns  
and variable configs.

Just some food for thought...
-Garrett