Please clear up DarwinPort/MacPorts confusion

[Kevin Walzer]

Dan Delaney wrote:
> Hi all.
> 
> I've decided to use MacPorts for my Intel-based MacBook, but the web pages
> seem a bit confusing. First, the DarwinPorts page looks as if it's still
> active. The only mention of the switch to MacPorts is in a news entry. And
> even in that there's no link to the new website. The rest of the DarwinPorts
> site still looks like nothing has changed. It seems to me that that page
> should be completely changed to be just a single page that tells people that
> the DarwinPorts project has transitioned to the MacPorts project and gives
> them a big link over the the MacPorts page.
> 
> Second, the MacPorts page doesn't have much infomration. No "About" page
> explaining anything. And most importantly, nothing explaining what the
> "current stable version" is. So when I go to Downloads I see DarwinPorts
> 1.3.2 and MacPorts 1.4, yet since the Website doesn't have any information
> about this 1.4 release, I don't know if this is alpha, beta, or what.
> 
> Can someone please explain what the deal is with this MacPorts 1.4 release?
> Is that the current recommended download or is it just an alpha or a beta?
> 
> Thanks
> --Dan
> 
> _______________________________________________
> macports-users mailing list
> macports-users at lists.macosforge.org
> http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo/macports-users
> 
> 

The transition of MacPorts from its old site to its new home is a "work 
in progress." The old site was mostly static pages, and was 
well-designed and organized, with clear links to downloading and 
installing MacPorts. The documentation was a bit outdated, but it was 
generally "good enough" to get going once you had things installed. In 
short, it was user-friendly.

The new site is hosted on top of a bug-tracking system (Trac) and wiki 
(which allows user-editing of documents). It is very developer-centric, 
not user-centric. Some strides have been made in  posting links on the 
front page to obvious things like downloads and "getting started," and 
once you poke around inside the documents, you'll see that they are 
pretty complete, up-to-date, and helpful: the developers done a very 
good job with this part. But *finding* the information you need, like 
which download to use, can be time-consuming, because the site is still 
hard to navigate.

The current "official" binary release is 1.3.1, with a link here:

http://svn.macports.org/repository/macports/downloads/DarwinPorts-1.3.1/DarwinPorts-1.3.1-10.4.dmg

Download this and run "sudo port selfupdate" to bootstrap to the latest 
MacPorts bits.

The 1.4 release is still, as far as I know, not ready/in beta mode. If 
the 1.4 version that is available for download at the site is the 
"official" latest version, I must have missed the announcement of its 
release.

-- 
Kevin Walzer
Code by Kevin
http://www.codebykevin.com