Jails and common ports

[Mel]

On Thursday 20 November 2008 23:33:30 Marcus I. Ryan wrote:

> However, I started hitting issues with libtool and friends.  The
> children would not find them, and would go ahead and start installing
> their own local copies of those ports.  Turns out quite a few tools
> are defined in /usr/ports/Mk/* and are defined relative to LOCALBASE.
> If I leave LOCALBASE and PREFIX alone in the child jails so they'll
> use /usr/local for their specific ports, I can't recognize and use
> other ports like libtool installed in /opt; it doesn't seem right to
> set LOCALBASE in the child jails since I want them to use /usr/local
> for anything I haven't provided.

Yeah, I feel your pain. You can't really do this with ports that require 
libraries from other ports. The ports system was created with the assumption 
that LOCALBASE (and PREFIX) for one installation (one PKG_DBDIR) is the same.

There are some exceptions, or rather, for some things it can work but 
libraries in general don't and libtool is even pickier. I only have 
bash-static, sudo and vim shared in /opt, as they are stand-alone and no 
ports I use depend on them.

The only thing I can think of that would work for you, is to use unionfs 
for /usr/local.

-- 
Mel

Problem with today's modular software: they start with the modules
    and never get to the software part.