Desolate Condition

[Jason Liu]

>
> One advantage that HomeBrew does have, though, is cachet: There are so
> many times when articles - or even organizations, such as Google - simply
> recommend using HomeBrew… with no mention of MacPorts.
>
> So, my feeling is that we need to up our public relations game. Do we have
> an active social media presence, for example? (Twitter in particular?)
>
> Of note, while I’m not an expert in social media relations, I’d happily
> volunteer to help with it.
>
> Thoughts?
>

I completely agree with this point. Due to MacPorts' low social media
visibility, and thus low mind share in this day and age, it seems that lots
of people, even including software authors, don't seem to consider MacPorts
as a viable (or at the very least, a mainstream) method of obtaining
software. I see plenty of open source projects have a blurb on their
websites saying "<software_name> is available through Homebrew using 'brew
install --cask <software_name>'", but I never see an equivalent blurb for
MacPorts these days.

I also agree with Andrew Janke's point that "MacPorts feels like more of a
"pro" thing and serious sysadmin tool, and its command output can be kind
of technical and intimidating." MacPorts essentially adds a *nix-style
package management system onto a Mac, and these *nix PMSes are also
(in)famous for feeling technical and intimidating. Perhaps a GUI like
Pallet would help in this regard? There seems to be much higher comfort
levels with GUI-based "app stores", even among non-technical users.

-- 
Jason Liu


On Tue, Jan 26, 2021 at 10:12 AM Christopher Nielsen <
mascguy at rochester.rr.com> wrote:

>
> *Ken Cunningham wrote:*
> homebrew is in shambles.
>
> their long-touted "no-sudo" and "no PATH" advantage from installing into
> /usr/local has been eliminated by Apple as the horrible security threat it
> always was. They have to retool into /opt/homebrew and make 10,000 builds
> respect the build args now.
>
> They stripped out all their universal handling code a few years ago, can't
> put it back, and so can't do the critical universal builds any more. They
> tell everyone universal is wasteful, lipo things manually, and run the
> x86_64 homebrew on Apple Silicon.
>
> So MacPorts, which works great from 10.4 PPC to 11.x arm64, is the place
> to be.
>
>
> Personnally, I’ve never actually tried HomeBrew, as I didn’t want anything
> installed into core OS areas. And after choosing  MacPorts years ago - 10+
> at this point? - I’ve always been very happy with the experience. Enough so
> that I’m finally giving back, as a contributor!
>
> One advantage that HomeBrew does have, though, is cachet: There are so
> many times when articles - or even organizations, such as Google - simply
> recommend using HomeBrew… with no mention of MacPorts.
>
> So, my feeling is that we need to up our public relations game. Do we have
> an active social media presence, for example? (Twitter in particular?)
>
> Of note, while I’m not an expert in social media relations, I’d happily
> volunteer to help with it.
>
> Thoughts?
>
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