This works if you want it to be available for just you.<p>Say for instance you have a dev server, so security isn't <i>as</i> big a deal* used by a team of people, all of whom would want access to the same basic packages. It seems that /usr/local/ or some other world-visible place would be the location for this stuff.<p>That you don't have to be root is the same way that you don't <i>necessarily</i> have to be root to install programs in the usual MacOS way of running a GUI installer. If you are part of admin, you're already privileged to sudo anyway, so the protection you get is primarily psychological; you type 'sudo', and it triggers the part of your brain that pays much closer attention to what you put on the command-line.<p>But as I mentioned to rbanffy, it is very possible I am missing a key risk that makes this a very bad thing to do. I am open to enlightenment. ;-)