MacPorts Status

[Michele Venturi]

The right questions is how it needs to be,
probably more on the organisational side
of things than the technical I would say...


On Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 23:11 Marc Wilson <posguy99 at gmail.com> wrote:

> But that’s not what HE said.  He disagreed with you.
>
> For myself, I don’t need reasons not to use Homebrew.  I’d need reasons TO
> use Homebrew.
>
> MacPorts does what I want in the way that I want it.  What else does it
> need to do?
>
> --
> Marc Wilson
> posguy99 at gmail.com
>
>
> On Sat, Jun 11, 2022, at 1:53 PM, Michele Venturi wrote:
>
> That's what I said, no coherence or coordination.
> So what are your reasons to not use HomeBrew?
>
> On Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 22:40 Jim DeLaHunt <list+macports-dev at jdlh.com>
> wrote:
>
> Hello, Jordan:
>
> Welcome (back to) MacPorts!
>
> I am nobody official with the project. I just try to make contributions
> to a few ports and documentation pages where I can. But in this project,
> lots of people contribute, each in their own way.
>
> On 2022-06-11 07:07, Jordan via macports-dev wrote:
> > Hi friends,
> >
> >
> > First of all thank you for your work! I use MacPorts exclusively for a
> > few different reasons and am looking to contribute to the project....
>
> I for one would be glad to have your contributions.
>
> > There is one aspect of MacPorts that has me a little down in the dumps
> > and that's is its _apparent_ (but likely not true) neglected state. I
> > think it's perhaps under maintained currently due to a lack of
> > people-power? I say so because I'd love to see more people using
> > MacPorts so I wonder if there's any "modernisation" (for lack of a
> > better word) to be had here? ... so perhaps some usage compared to
> > things like Homebrew can be gained back since I'd love to see this
> > project used more.
>
> I think it is not fair to say MacPorts overall is in a neglected state.
> Its core purpose is to help people compile a wide range of freely
> available software on the macOS platform. As part of that it helps
> gather the related software needed to make the requested software work.
> I think that this aspect of MacPorts works very well. It gets a lot of
> care and attention. There is a lot of activity. For instance, I just
> moved onto an M1 Mac, and I see a lot of support for compiling software
> with the M1 CPU's architecture. That is the opposite of neglect.
>
> Now, certain aspects of the project are neglected.  You mention the
> timeline on Trac. That's a page of documentation.
>
> When you say "modernisation", I think you mean, changes to how MacPorts
> work to make it easier or better for some audience. I think that is best
> approached as a collection of small projects, each with a specific
> understanding of a problem, and its own goal for an improvement. One way
> to proceed is to start a macPorts-dev thread for each of these ideas
> (and each with a different Subject: line, please).
>
> You mention believing that `sudo` probably scares new users. Maybe so,
> maybe not. A first step is to gather some evidence whether this is true.
> A next step is to figure out why the port tool requires use of `sudo`. A
> third step is to figure out what alternative way the port tool could
> work which does not require `sudo`.  For my part, use of `sudo` is no
> problem at all. MacPorts is a command-line tool for system maintenance.
> I am used to system maintenance tools requiring administrator passwords.
> `sudo` is a command-line way of requiring a password.
>
> I will also say that competing with Homebrew about which project has
> more users is not very interesting to me. Homebrew works well for some
> people. MacPorts works well for some people. I'm interested in helping
> MacPorts be the best MacPorts it can be. If Homebrew ends up with more
> users, that is no big deal to me.
>
> > Also, as a tacked-on issue I am working on...
>
> I suggest you start a separate email thread for each issue. If you try
> to discuss deleting files on uninstall as part of a thread with the
> Subject: of "MacPorts status", which was originally about your offer to
> help, I suspect you will lose a lot of readers.
>
> Anyhow, I look forward to seeing you in the email list, and in the trac
> tickets, and in the Pull Requests!  Glad to have your help.
>
> Best regards,
>      —-Jim "just another MacPorts user/contributor" DeLaHunt
>
>
>
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