&#62; ports does have the separation, you fetch/build as the local user and run install escalated.<p>I see from the Macports 1.8 release notes that privilege dropping is supported. That's good news, but is it the default? The release notes indicate that you need to pass command-line options to get this behavior. I assume that most people just "sudo port install foopkg".<p>&#62; blindly changing the permission structure of /usr/local should scare everybody.<p>On Mac OS X (as of Snow Leopard, anyway), there are no permissions to change, since /usr/local doesn't even exist until you create it. Nothing in the OS itself depends on it or anything that lives there. There's nothing special or privileged, neither by design nor by convention, about /usr/local on Mac OS X. Making it user-writable and using it with a package manager is no different than creating a 2nd home directory for that purpose. If you're running that rare bird that is a multi-user Mac and co-managing packages with other trusted users, then you can simply make it group-writable by those users. It's safer than giving them any sudo privileges.