The old request of being able to run MacPorts as non-root resurfaced, something that isn't supported at the moment... Most ports do install under the configurable ${prefix} (and ${x11prefix} for some of the optional X11 ports), but there are also a bunch that are hardcoding the (admin) locations of /Applications/MacPorts and /Library/Frameworks. So the Mac OS X tree (macosx.mtree) probably also needs a prefix added, so that they would instead install under ~/Applications and ~/Library, when running as non-admin ? (and probably default to ~/Library/Tcl for macports1.0) As a first step, I added* two parameters to configure: --with-applications-dir and --with-frameworks-dir It also needs a new Portfile setting added somewhere: a flag for "this port requires root/admin priviledges" It would be set for things like servers or extensions, that really *needs* root in order to run properly... Possibly tying in with the "startupitem.type none", http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macports-dev/2006-October/ 000136.html Then the above two variables could go in as something like: ${destroot.applications} ${destroot.frameworks} --anders * http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/macports/changeset/33499