On Jul 30, 2005, at 19:21, Philipp Riegger wrote:

> My problem always was, i felt a bit uncomfortable with gentoo  
> changing my OS X files.

> so i like the fink solution, to have an extra directory, which i  
> can simply remove if i don't like it anymore or that i can simply  
> change my PATH to have an origial OS X environment.
>
> Some time ago there was a discussion about those things, which way  
> gentoo-osx should go, what to do and so. What about this  
> discussion? Is the extra directory for gentoo-osx definetly dead  
> and will not be used? Or are the changes to portage that would be  
> neccessary to difficult?

There really wasn't ever any discussion at length as to whether or  
not we would support installing to a separate 'jail', as far as I  
recall -- the decision was always that we would eventually support  
such functionality. The main ongoing discussion is simply on [the  
difficulties of] implementation.

Currently, we support two modes of operation: the default 'collision- 
protect' profile (a strict don't-touch-apple-provided-files policy),  
and the 'progressive' profile (a free-for-all overwrite-whatever-you- 
want policy). In the future we will support installing everything to  
some location, for example '/opt/gentoo', to provide the best of both  
worlds. In the meanwhile, the default (collision-protect) profile  
sounds like what you're after; Apple-provided files are not allowed  
to be overwritten when this profile is in use (there is a bug open on  
symlinks being overwritten, but that is being taken care of and is a  
fairly isolated situation).

As of yet, portage is not suited for what we have now termed  
'pathspec', or 'installing to an alternate prefix', or 'using portage  
as a secondary package manager', etc. Changes are being made to  
portage that will allow for features like this, and should be  
included in the next major release (some months away still).

The portage team has generally been very happy to receive help, if  
you're interested.

I hope this clarifies things for you, and everyone else on this list.

--

Hasan Khalil
eBuild and Porting Co-Lead
Gentoo for Mac OS X