On Sep 14, 2007, at 16:07, Olivier Croquette wrote:

I just read this thread from 2006 about running macports without root rights: http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macports-dev/2006-October/ 000128.html

The outcome seems to be that MacPorts don't need root, but certain ports may well expect root rights, especially during the "install" phase.

So the following ideas were brought up:

1. flag the packages requiring root as such

2. patch the necessary ports as required if possible

I was wondering if something had been some in this direction, and if not, if it is somehow on the roadmap.

I don't think anything has been done about this, though I'm not aware what the problems were. Most ports should install into ${prefix}, whatever you set that to at install time. You can set it to whatever you want. You also need to set the Tcl prefix, if you don't want to require root. (Otherwise the Tcl prefix is in /Library/Tcl and you need root to install there.) Some ports install outside of ${prefix} and may be problematic. For example most in the aqua category install in /Applications/MacPorts. This could be ok if you ensure the ownership of that directory allows non-root users to write into it. Some ports in the x11 category need to install in /usr/X11R6 for which you definitely need root. I don't think anything can be done about that. If you're having problems with specific ports, tell us about it.