port "cask" -- installing prebuilt binaries

[Fred Wright]

On Wed, 29 Jul 2020, Ken Cunningham wrote:

> there seems to be demand for replicating the “binary only” installers of homebrew cask.
>
> we have a few ports that do that now, and I see more and more coming in.

>From the user's perspective, how does that differ from a port that's 
available as a binary archive?  I presume the idea is that it directly 
uses a precompiled binary from the upstream source, but from the user's 
perspective, does it really matter whether it was a binary from upstream 
or a binary from the buildbots?

Or is this for ports where upstream doesn't provide source at all?

Personally, I'd prefer the MacPorts approach if it were less stingy with 
the binary archives.  Ideally, one should be *able* to build from source, 
but not be *required* to do so.

Fred Wright