Homebrew

[Bradley Giesbrecht]

On May 18, 2010, at 2:52 AM, Geoffroy Carrier wrote:

> On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 08:52, Andrea D'Amore  
> <and.damore at macports.org> wrote:
>> I think that point stands as long as other programs don't overlap,
>> /usr/local is the default prefix for autotools and you can end having
>> a messed up installation.
>
> For new manual installations just use
> --prefix=/usr/local/packagename/version and you can use brew
> link/unlink automagically. And that's FREAKING cool with my dev
> workflow.
>
> For old installations...
> OK, it might be a pain in the a** if you want to make brew versions
> coexist with versions you installed manually, but it would be anyway
> if those bins/libs were in different places as you would have to play
> with paths all the time anyway.
>
>> Where do symlinks shine when compared to hardlinks? Notice that is an
>> actual question, I'm not aware of advantages or disadvantages of both
>> of them when it comes to a management system.
>
> First thing I can think of: ls -l to track which version you're using!

I don't remember why I don't care for simlinks, I think is was some  
RedHat experience a long time ago.
That said, if you are working with something that behaves badly and  
clobbers things important to you, relinking is possible with simlinks.
Virtually every howto for any unix I have read installs to /usr/local.  
It is in fact were most people expect to put there stuff. And  
sysconfdir = /etc virtually everywhere.
But MacPorts works very well in my opinion.

If I could be learning a little Ruby while building packages or use  
Ruby knowledge I already have this sounds like a plus. TCL is not a  
great fit for me other then MacPorts.

Reading comments like this make me wonder why some people wouldn't  
have made a local macports repo to upgrade/build their on packages:
> Have you ever gotten annoyed at the time it takes for a package to  
> get updated on MacPorts or Fink?


Maybe a lack of the time to learn MacPorts and TCL or possibly because  
they loose heart before finding out how easy it is to create their own  
packages in their own local repo. Maybe local repos is something that  
should be promoted and made more prominent on the homepage and in the  
guide?

For example, if I didn't want "port upgrade outdated" to upgrade  
openssl I could copy the openssl port to a local repo and have  
something similar to package masks on gentoo.

I think MacPorts is a great tool. Thank you to those who maintain it.

// Brad