MACPORTS.CONF(5)

NAME
macports.conf - Configuration file of the MacPorts system

DESCRIPTION
macports.conf is the configuration file used to bootstrap the MacPorts system. This file is read by the port command and determines how it behaves. Lines beginning with '#' are comments, empty lines are ignored. The format is that of a simple key/value space or tab separated pair.

The file contains entries of the form:

    <key> <value>

The value of any given key can be referred to by the '${<keyname>}' abstraction, where <keyname> expands to the key in question.

KEYS
The following keys are used by port itself:

prefix
    Sets the directory where ports are installed. Any path may be used but those with spaces and/or non ascii characters should be avoided, as this can broke some ports. This key is often referred to as '${prefix}'.
    Default: /opt/local

x11prefix
    Path containing an X11 installation on your system.
    Default: /usr/X11R6

portdbpath
    Directory where MacPorts keeps working data as downloaded sources, installed ports receipts and the main registry. Same path restrictions apply as for '${prefix}'.
    Default: ${prefix}/var/macports

portdbformat
    Storage type to use for the MacPorts registry. Currently the only supportted format is "flat".
    Default: flat

portinstalltype
    Sets the mode in which ports are installed by MacPorts. Supported values are 'direct' or 'image'. The 'direct' mode is often used on systems that do not support 'image' due to limitations in their installed version of TCL. In 'direct' more ports are installed directly into '${prefix}' and only one flavor of a port can be installed at any given time. In 'image' mode multiple flavors of a port (i.e., different versions and/or any possible combination of its variants) can be installed concurrently into '${portdbpath}/software/${portname}' and only one can be "activated" onto '${prefix}' via soft or hard links from the former to the latter.
    Default: image

    NOTE. Mac OS X 10.2 and Darwin 6.x users should switch to 'direct' mode to have MacPorts working properly on their systems.

applications_dir
    Directory containing Applications installed from ports.
    Default: /Applications/MacPorts

frameworks_dir
    Directory containing Frameworks installed from ports.
    Default: ${prefix}/Library/Frameworks

sources_conf
    Location of the sources file. This file enables rsync synchronization of the default ports tree with the MacPorts rsync server (through the "sync" target of the port commnand) and any other local tree(s) you might have.
    Default: ${prefix}/etc/macports/sources.conf

variants_conf
    Location of the optional global variants definition file, listing those that should be used in all installed ports if available.
    Default: ${prefix}/etc/macports/variants.conf

portarchivemode
    Key governing the creation of binary archives of installed ports for installation/reinstallation ease.
    Default: yes

portarchivepath
    Location where to store/retrieve ports binary archive files from when archive mode is active.
    Default: ${portdbpath}/packages

portarchivetype
    Colon or comma separated, space free list of supported formats of archives to create or read from when '${archivemode}' is set to 'yes'. Use of multiple types will cause archive creation to build all the specified types in one step. Unarchive uses multiple types as a search list to locate any existing archive, with the first found match being used.
    Supported types are: tgz, tar, tbz, tbz2, tlz, xar, zip, cpgz, cpio
    Default: tgz

configureccache
    Use ccache (C/C++ compiler cache). Requires that ccache has been installed.
    Default: no

configuredistcc
    Use distcc (distributed compiler). Requires that distcc has been installed.
    Default: no

configurepipe
    Use pipes rather than intermediate files when compiling C/C++/etc (gcc -pipe)
    Default: no

buildnicevalue
    Lowered scheduling priority (0-20) to use for make when building ports
    Default: 0

buildmakejobs
    Number of simultaneous make jobs (commands) to use when building ports
    Default: 1

portautoclean
    Automatic cleaning of the build directory of a given port after it has been installed.
    Default: yes

universal_target
    The MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET to use for +universal variant
    Example: 10.4

universal_sysroot
    The SDK "sysroot" full path to use for +universal variant
    Example: /Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4u.sdk

universal_archs
    The machine architectures to use for +universal variant (multiple architecture entries should be space separated)
    Regular architectures include: ppc, i386, ppc64, x86_64
    Default: ppc i386

startupitem_type
    Set the default type of startupitems to be generated, overridable by Portfiles that explicitly state a startupitem.type key. If set to "default", then a type will be selected that's appropriate to the OS. Supported types are: none, SystemStarter, launchd, default, rcNG.
    Default: default

destroot_umask
    Umask value to use during the destrooting or a port.
    Default: 022

rsync_server
    Default rsync server to connect to when running "selfupdate" through the port command to update your entire MacPorts installation (spanning both the MacPorts infrastucture and the ports tree).
    Default: rsync.macports.org

rsync_dir
    Rsync directory from which to pull MacPorts sources from the rsync server.
    Default: release/base/ (which pulls sources for the currently shipping MacPorts release)

rsync_options
    Default rsync options to use when connecting to the rsync server.
    Default: -rtzv --delete-after

binpath
    Sets the directory search path for locating system executables used by MacPorts. This variable should contain the paths for locating utilities such as rsync, tar, cvs and others.
    Default: ${prefix}/bin:${prefix}/sbin:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:${x11prefix}/bin

extra_env
    List of extra environment variables MacPorts should keep in the user's environment when sanitizing it.

FILES

${prefix}/etc/macports/macports.conf
    Standard system-wide MacPorts configuration file.

~/.macports/macports.conf
    User-specific configuration override. This file, if found, will be used instead of the default file at ${prefix}/etc/macports/macports.conf.

SEE ALSO
port(1), portfile(7), portgroup(7), portstyle(7) porthier(7),

AUTHORS
Juan Manuel Palacios <jmpp@macports.org> Matt Anton <matt@opendarwin.org>