Why ~/.macports/.history and not ~/.macports/history (why a .file in a .dir)?
Well, my reasoning may have been a bit lame, but it seemed like since it's not normally a file anybody wants to read (while there are other files in ~/.macports that they do) that it was just as well to keep it hidden and out of the way.
I'd just as soon have it visible. On the off chance I _did_ want to look at it, I'd never have thought to look for a dot-file there.
+1 from me on the latter view; furthermore, every other program that I've run that made a ~/.blah directory (elinks, mplayer, gnupg, subversion, tor, ssh, wireshark, etc., etc.) creates all its files in ~/.blah without a leading dot.
And while I'm asking why not use ~/Library/Application Support/ Macports instead of ~/.macports? Isn't it the Apple way to use the Library instead of .dirs?
Very good question. I'd be happy to hear feedback from other developers. I'd happy with either.
I would say that, in an ideal world, MacPorts configuration would go in Application Support instead of a dot-file. However, almost everything that MacPorts installs has its configuration in dot- files. It would be inconsistent to put MacPorts configuration in a different place from all of these.
To me, Library/Application Support is the place where Cocoa apps put things, while Unixish apps, especially command-line ones, use dot- files and dot-directories, so I'd stick with ~/.macports. Kind regards, Maun Suang -- Boey Maun Suang (Boey is my surname) Email: boeyms@macports.org