A Plea to Reduce Dependences

[Anders F Björklund]

Ryan Schmidt wrote:

> 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.

Homebrew does, every time you install:
    Warning: It appears you have Macports or Fink installed
    Software installed with other package managers causes known problems for
    Homebrew. If formula fail to build uninstall Macports/Fink and reinstall any
    affected formula.

Fink doesn't, but it will still fail spectacularly if you
have both MacPorts and Fink in your $PATH (for instance).
Same goes if you install Homebrew in the default /usr/local
location, since that's already in the system search paths.

Otherwise it's mostly OK, except that you're at the mercy
of those (broken) software packages that "helpfully" look
in /sw and /opt/local without first being told to do so...
(say with the PATH and CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS etc variables)


I think it's very useful to be able to install and run
multiple package managers, just like I find it useful
to run multiple operating systems. And having to reboot
or pick just one seems like a restriction, but that's me.

But I can see why you don't want to support it in your
"distribution", there's similar rules by Linux vendors.
Enough support dealing with your own packages, without
having to take bug reports from any customized setups.

Pity, though. There's nothing *that* special between
all the various package managers and their file formats
and their dependencies, except that they're "different" ?
Not that Macports or Homebrew manage packages, but anyway.

--anders