Desolate Condition

[harens]

I completely agree that Homebrew is currently winning at publicity.

I think vocalising the points of Saagar Jha’s article Thoughts on macOS Package Managers <https://saagarjha.com/blog/2019/04/26/thoughts-on-macos-package-managers/> would be very helpful, since there’s a lot going in MacPorts’ favour:

MacPorts is much better from a security point of view (considering the whole /usr/local/issue)
Package availability is much higher, especially for older packages
There’s support for much older macOS versions
Being the “pro” tool, there’s a lot more options and functionality
We don’t send user’s data off as analytics without their permission
Their community is in shambles after each controversial decision (e.g. Google Analytics <https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/issues/142>, resignation of members <https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/pull/4864#issuecomment-489648355>)
etc. etc.

We also need to make it easier for users to contribute. About a year ago, I didn’t really know about MacPorts and solely used Homebrew. After I started contributing, I realised how much better MacPorts is, and I’m sure many other new contributors will feel the same.

I’ve tried to improve the situation with tools like seaport <https://github.com/harens/seaport>, but to compete with Homebrew’s golden standard brew bump-formula-pr <https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/blob/master/Library/Homebrew/dev-cmd/bump-formula-pr.rb> and the Homebrew bump GitHub Action <https://github.com/marketplace/actions/homebrew-bump-formula>, which allows users to easily contribute without knowing any git, will require some work.

Haren.
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