A Plea to Reduce Dependences

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Aug 31, 2011, at 04:11, Guido wrote:

> Anders F Björklund wrote:
> 
>> Unless somebody completes Pallet, the only working GUI would be Port Authority.
> 
> 
> I think we need a completely redesigned GUI leveraging Core Data, Grand Central
> Dispatch and the Scripting Bridge.
> 
> MacRuby could be the right tool to use since it supports all these new frameworks
> and is fully integrated in Lion.
> 
> Even without using CD and GCD, I came up in a few days with a first prototype
> (https://sites.google.com/site/macosguigna/) which emulates Synaptic:
> the new idea is to mark the packages you want to install/uninstall/update first
> and then to commit the changes to an external Terminal window.
> 
> Guido
> -- 
> https://sites.google.com/site/macosguigna/

That's rather fascinating actually. Congratulations on being able to put that together so quickly.

I am worried though that you seem to be advocating that users install multiple package managers and mix and match, search across all of them, and pick which software they want without regard for what package manager it came from. It is completely unsupported to run MacPorts while other package managers are installed; this is a good way for users to make things break. I would expect Fink and Homebrew would have similar statements. We do not support users who do this; we tell them to pick a single package manager (whether that be MacPorts or another one) and uninstall the others. So while it's admirable that your app supports multiple package managers, you may be setting your users up to fail unless you make it very clear to them that they should use software from a single package manager only.