Changing location of ports tree

[ross]

On Sun, 06 Nov 2005 13:16:02 -0800, Alex Zbyslaw <xfb52 at dial.pipex.com>  
wrote:

> ross wrote:
>
>> My /usr partition is to small for some of the larger programs   
>> (openoffice.org, jdk, etc) and I want to move my ports tree to a  
>> harddrive  with more space. can I just change the line in
>> /usr/local/etc/pkgtools.conf that says "ENV['PORTSDIR'] ||=  
>> '/usr/ports'"  to "ENV['PORTSDIR'] ||= '/mybigfatharddrive/ports'"?
>>
>> Will all the pkg tools such as portsnap, portupgrade, and portversion   
>> continue to function properly? will I have to edit any other config  
>> files  before this will work seemlessly?
>
> Move the tree then make a symlink from /usr/ports to your new dir.   
> That's guaranteed to work.  You could also try just moving the distfiles  
> subdir and symlinking it, since that really takes the space (apart from  
> building).  Without knowing how little space you have, it's hard to know  
> if that will be good enough.
>
> Just changing the ENV in pkgtools.conf will only work for tools which  
> use it, which I don't think includes portsnap.  You'd want to set it in  
> your root shell for everything to see it.
>
> Or, for the larger ports just make with WRKDIRPREFIX set to somewhere  
> with lots of space.  You can set that is pkgtools.conf per port,  
> assuming you use portupgrade or in make.conf, for every port to use it.   
> I don't like that as for some ports I sometimes need to keep the work  
> subdir hanging around.
>
> See man ports!
>
> --Alex
>

that symbolic link trick works wonders. Thanks for that tip as well as the  
others

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