Re possibility of ports that install pre-built apps (allowed for free distribution)

[Sergey Fedorov]

My initial thought was the same: it is convenient to manage software via
Macports, at least developer and admin software.

Regarding an update mechanism, it is a valid question, but perhaps a
solution can be found?

For OnyX, this issue is relevant only for the latest OS. As you can see,
anything less than Ventura is not developed anymore so won’t get updates:
https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/onyx.html

On Wed, Nov 23, 2022 at 2:38 PM Nils Breunese <nils at breun.nl> wrote:

> I personally like to install software via my package manager (MacPorts) as
> much as I can. This makes bootstrapping a new machine easy, as well as
> keeping everything up to date. Therefore in principle I’d like all software
> I need to be installable via my package manager. It just makes admin life
> easier, and I’d like to avoid having to use multiple package managers to
> maintain the software on my Mac.
>
> However, on https://www.macports.org/ MacPorts doesn’t present itself as
> a generic package manager, but as “an easy to use system for compiling,
> installing, and upgrading either command-line, X11 or Aqua based
> open-source software on the Mac operating system”. So, maybe MacPorts isn’t
> a generic package manager that lets me manage any software on my Mac. But
> in practice MacPorts has deviated from this description. There are ports
> that install prebuilt binaries, and I believe some people even use it on
> non-Mac machines.
>
> By the way, you do get into a weird situation when an app has its own
> update mechanism, because then how is a package manager going to stay in
> control? I think this might be an issue with OnyX? For this reason most GUI
> apps I use — even when they’re open source, like Firefox — are not managed
> via MacPorts on my machine.
>
> Nils.
>
> Op 23 nov. 2022 om 04:50 heeft Sergey Fedorov <vital.had at gmail.com> het
> volgende geschreven:
>
> 
> Hi everyone, I have recently made a port that installs OnyX for every
> system from Tiger onwards:
> https://github.com/macports/macports-ports/pull/16710
>
> Turned out, there is some ambiguity regarding such kind of ports. I don’t
> particularly get why such ports cannot be allowed, provided building from
> source is not an option and provided developers allow distributing freely
> (which is the case for OnyX, see:
> https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/index.html).
> As a matter of fact, MacPorts *does have* ports that install pre-built
> binaries, either as a variant or as the only option.
>
> It is perhaps indeed unneeded to have gazillions of ports of such a kind;
> however, as for OnyX goes, it is a useful and widely used app, supporting
> every version of macOS. How does it hurt to have it?
>
> Best regards,
> Sergey Fedorov
> GitHub: @barracuda156
>
>
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