Package delivery without XCode

[Craig Treleaven]

At 8:45 AM -0700 5/18/15, David Evans wrote:
>On 5/18/15 8:01 AM, Craig Treleaven wrote:
>>Background - So I was following a discussion on another site about 
>>Apple's Aperture being replaced.  Many people are looking for 
>>alternatives and there has been essentially no mention of open 
>>source alternatives (like DarkTable, LightZone or DigiKam).  Most 
>>of these folks are photographers and would never consider 
>>installing MacPorts and XCode in order to get an application they 
>>might otherwise find interesting.
>>
>>1) How much work would it take to have a mode in MacPorts where it 
>>only installs pre-compiled packages?  Is the assumption that XCode 
>>is present so deeply ingrained that Macports-base would have to be 
>>extensively re-designed?
>>
>>For example, I would think 'port search' would need to be modified 
>>to only show the pre-compiled packages (available for that 
>>platform) and somehow indicate that only the default variants are 
>>available.
>>
>>Perhaps a fork of Pallet could be so modified?
>>
>>2) Are there a worthwhile number of packages that would then be 
>>available?  I know my own MythTV ports run into the OpenSSL 
>>conflict and therefore aren't available as binaries.  From 
>>http://packages.macports.org/ it appears we don't have binary 
>>packages for DarktTable or DigiKam (and no port of LightZone).
>>
>>OTOH, someone posted some information several weeks ago explaining 
>>how to determine if that licence conflict really applies or not. 
>>(Involves inspecting library linkages, as I recall.)  I get the 
>>impression that our current policy is quite conservative and that a 
>>number of packages (many?) may actually qualify for binary 
>>distribution with some analysis and verification.
>>
>
>Have you looked at the various binary packaging targets available 
>with MacPorts?
>
>mpkg or mdmg  might provide a mechanism to do what you want.  Just 
>would need a way to distribute the results providing the licensing 
>issues could be worked out.
>
>See https://guide.macports.org/#using.binaries

I am intimately familiar with mpkg/mdmg -- I provide an all-in-one 
installer for Myth[1].  For that, I use Parallels to maintain an 
isolated prefix for building (and others for testing.  It occurred to 
me that the existing infrastructure of MacPorts provides _most_ of 
what would be needed for delivering pre-built packages to 
less-sophisticated users.

[1] https://sourceforge.net/projects/macportsmythtvinstaller/

Craig