On 6 Jul 2012, at 23:29, Andriy Gapon wrote:

> I think that this is a dummy argument.  One could easily want his LOCALBASE to
> be /opt and the real ports system should support that.  So what ports 
> currently
> do, they really have to do (assuming $LOCALBASE as opposed to /usr/local).

That's completely irrelevant.  If a user installs things in a non-standard 
location, then that user should expect to have to point things that they build 
from source at that non-standard location.  If, however, a user installs things 
in the standard location, then this should Just Work.  

The workflow that I have seen where this fails:

- User runs ./configure
- Configure script says 'libpng is not installed!'
- User installs libpng from ports / packages
- User runs ./configure
- Configure script says 'libpng is not installed!'
- User sends me an email asking why they can't install on FreeBSD, usually 
including a small whine that this works on their favourite Linux distro.
- I tell the user 'Oh, you need to say --with-png-include=/usr/local/include 
--with-png-lib=/usr/local/lib'
- User says 'Why doesn't the compiler that FreeBSD ships know where to find 
headers and libraries that FreeBSD installs?'
- I shrug.

I assumed this was done for a sensible reason, but so far no one has actually 
said what that reason is.  In an ideal world, the system compiler should be 
able to automatically find any headers and libraries installed by any supported 
mechanism (ports, pkg_add, pkg add), but in an almost-ideal world it should at 
least find them if they are in the default locations.

David_______________________________________________
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