A Plea to Reduce Dependences (e.g., for swig)

[Daniel J. Luke]

On Aug 16, 2011, at 4:44 PM, Jonathan Stickel wrote:
> 
> On 8/16/11 13:23 , M.E. O'Neill wrote:
>> By default, swig has build dependences on bison and gsed.  Yet swig
>> builds fine on stock OS X, so special versions of bison and gsed
>> are*NOT*  required.  If I remove these build dependences by hand (and
>> remove the line that edits the configure script to use gsed rather
>> than sed), everything still builds just fine.
> 
> I think what you are asking for is the intent of "Homewbrew":

Few people probably remember this, but back when I started using MacPorts, one of the selling points was that it used the built-in MacOS X software (as opposed to fink, which installed its own versions of everything).

There was even talk about integrating with the OS Installer/receipt system (which was possibly going to be enhanced) so that versions could be verified and whatnot.

Needless to say, that integration didn't happen, and as a community we decided to install our own versions of things after having lots of support issues when Apple would release an update that changed something we were depending on.

--
Daniel J. Luke                                                                   
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