Ryan Schmidt <ryandesign@macports.org> writes:
I'm not sure I like that mtree violations are fatal errors. The ports that are now failing to install because of mtree violations installed just fine in MacPorts 1.5.0. Why should they now fail to install? Their content has not changed. Sure, they may be installing things in places they shouldn't, but why should we make the user suffer? We have a -t switch which informs us about forgotten dependencies in the port -- but this does not issue a fatal error. It's just a message which portfile authors can use to improve their portfiles. Maybe mtree violations could be handled similarly.
I'm also concerned about needing to specify in the portfile that the port intends to violate the mtree. For example, I'm going to have to add that to the php5 port, because it wants to install an apache2 module and the apache2 layout is considered nonstandard. So just because I want to install one item in a weird place, I have to turn off the mtree violation checks in the entire php5 portfile. It would be nicer if port would just issue nonfatal debug messages letting us know exactly which files were violating the mtree. This way I could assure myself that my port is installing the apache2 module in a weird place, yes, but that everything else is being installed in sane locations.
+1 And I still don't know exactly what an mtree violation is. Mark