ports/158179: some packages do not fully honor -P dir option in pkg_add(1)

[Lowell Gilbert]

Baptiste Daroussin <bapt at FreeBSD.org> writes:

> On Tue, 19 Jul 2011 18:41:31 +0000, Dieter BSD wrote:
>>> 1.  Spell out very clearly its purpose - is it to populate a jail,
>>> for
>>> example?
>>
>> Populating a chroot/jail is one purpose.
>>
>
> Corrupting the pkgdb there is a chroot option for that

You would need to set the DBDIR to manage the databases properly (which
makes sense because there really is a separate set of ports living in
the jail).  I agree about the chroot option, though; I do not see any
reason that one would ever use -P rather than -C for populating a jail
from the outside.

>> Another is to test a new version of a package without messing up the
>> existing version.
>>
>
> it will mess up the database either

One would just use a different database.  As I said, that makes sense.
This thread has already heard from one person who successfully uses the
"-P" option for this purpose, so it's definitely useful to someone.

>> There are bound to be other reasons.
>>
>> Compiling the port rather than installing a package isn't always
>> a solution.  Many ports are incredibly difficult to get compiled.
>>
>> PREFIX needs to be an install time variable, not compile time.
>
> PREFIX at install time is just broken and can't be anything else than
> broken, because lot's of path given a build time configuration path
> for example, etc.

Yes.  In general, packages just can't be placed anywhere other than
where they were built for, and we can't do anything about that in the
ports infrastructure.