On Nov 9, 2022, at 17:57, supervisitor wrote: > ... ups, this I have probably overlooked. (have made the installation from > source). > > But before I now uninstall everything to perform a reinstall, some further > questions: > > Can I do an installation with parameter "--with-applications-dir" carefree > over the existing installation... without losing the information about > installed apps, e.g. inside "registry.db"? > The documentation for upgrading a source installation is described as follows > in the documentation: > MacPorts Guide, Chapter: 2.3: > "To upgrade a copy of MacPorts that was installed from source to the > newer release of the source code, simply repeat the source install with the > newer version of the MacPorts source code." > But does this also apply if I specify an additional parameter like > "--with-applications-dir"? > > Or can I change the path afterwards in configuration file(s), e.g. > '/opt/local/etc/macports/macports.conf:applications_dir > /Applications/MacPorts'? > (of course after a 'sudo mv /Applications/MacPorts /opt/local/.')
I think either is fine: Either reconfigure with a different --with-applications-dir or edit applications_dir in macports.conf. Neither will affect your installed ports. Any ports you already have installed that put files in /Applications/MacPorts will continue to believe that that's where their files are and you should not manually move them. After you change the setting, you should rebuild those ports (e.g. sudo port -n upgrade --force python310). The pre-compiled archives we build on our servers are tailored to certain default MacPorts settings, including the prefix, applications_dir, frameworks_dir, and others. If you change these settings, you will not receive any pre-compiled archives and will have to compile every port from source when you install it. This is usually undesirable (people usually like receiving an archive in seconds instead of waiting minutes or hours for a port to compile) so I recommend you do not change these settings.
