macports challenges

[Jonathan Stickel]

I'm glad to see some constructive discussion. After I sent the email, I 
was quite worried of the negative tone, and that it might be perceived 
as trolling. Sorry if that is true; it was not my attention.

On 12/6/18 01:13, Nils Breunese wrote:
> Rainer Müller wrote:
> 
>> Somehow the Homebrew community managed to get their ubiquitous marketing
>> on almost every software project website. Compare this with the MacPorts
>> website, which has not seen any redesign in more than 10 years...
>>
>> Although a good package management system should not need to advertise
>> itself, as every software would be available without users being told
>> where to look – the package manager should be their first choice.
> 
> But you need to know about this package manager first then. And be 
> convinced into installing and using it. I found out about the existence 
> of package managers on Mac (I guess it was Fink for me at the time) 
> through installation instructions for some tool I wanted to install.
> 
> When I started to maintain some packages for MacPorts I also made an 
> effort to do pull requests for the install docs to add instructions for 
> installing via MacPorts (for instance [0]). I think this is very 
> important PR for a package manager, apart from its own website.
> 
> For instance, yesterday I wanted to try out Hugo. It’s available in 
> MacPorts, but the Hugo site only mentions Homebrew, binary download and 
> building from source as installation options [1]. I think it might pay 
> off if maintainers would pay more attention to this.
> 

This is a great idea. When a new port is added, the maintainer (or 
requester) should be encouraged to facilitate docs/instructions/notes 
upstream that the software is available in macports. (I wouldn't make it 
a requirement -- requirements can be perceived as draconian and keep 
people away.) Is there a place in the guide or wiki to say this? Maybe 
chapter 4 of the guide, "Portfile Development"?

I'll work on retroactively doing this for the ports for which I am 
maintainer.


> Nils.
> 
> [0] 
> https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/current/reference/htmlsingle/#getting-started-macports-cli-installation
> [1] https://gohugo.io/getting-started/installing#pick-your-method