Your own symlinks shouldn’t affect MacPorts or get overwritten. Definitely not when you keep them out of /opt/local (e.g. /usr/local/bin/lua -> /opt/local/bin/lua5.4), but even under /opt/local/bin they should stay untouched until you install a port which claims that path.
A symlink wouldn’t be a piecemeal solution, under the hood the ‘port select’ command would also just create a symlink (/opt/local/bin/lua -> /opt/local/bin/lua5.4). As long as it’s just for your own user account, I think I’d personally just create an alias in my shell configuration. Nils. Kenneth Wolcott <[email protected]> wrote: > Thank you, Nils. I had already tried my own symlinks, but I realized that > when lua was updated I'd probably confuse MacPorts or it would get > overwritten. I guess a local alias would be a better workaround than using > the symlinks. Also, I was concerned that this would be a piecemail solution, > not all Lua functionality might be available by doing it this way. Wrote up > a MacPorts enhancement request. > > Thanks, > Ken Wolcott > > On Tue, Oct 21, 2025 at 5:37 PM Nils Breunese <[email protected]> wrote: > Kenneth Wolcott <[email protected]> wrote: > > > This fails: > > sudo port select --set lua lua5.4 > > > > I have lua54 installed. > > > > /opt/local/bin/lua5.4 exists, /opt/local/bin/lua does not. > > > > I'm confused. > > You can run ‘port select --summary’ to show a list of all selection groups > that available for the ports that are currently installed on your system. As > far as I can see the lua* ports currently don’t provide a selection group for > the ‘port select’ command, so the command you ran is expected to fail. > > If you want to run ‘lua5.4' by calling ‘lua’, you can manage your own alias > (set ‘alias lua=lua5.4’ in your shell configuration), create a symlink > somewhere in your $PATH, or support for ‘port select’ will need to be added > to the lua* ports (consider creating a feature request ticket in Trac). > > Nils.
