Using MacProrts inhouse as multiplatform package manager

[Anders F Björklund]

Ryan Schmidt wrote:

>> MacPorts only supports Mac OS X, so that's not going to work 
>> cross-platform.
>> (you can use it on FreeBSD with GNUstep, but it is not officially 
>> supported)
>
> Well, to express that in a bit more friendly way: MacPorts is designed 
> for Mac OS X 10.3 and later. The target audience is Mac OS X users. 
> But since Mac OS X is based on BSD UNIX, many ports will also work on 
> BSD-style operating systems.

I didn't mean to sound unfriendly. I just meant that since the refocus 
of MacPorts on Mac OS X, other operating systems such as Darwin or 
FreeBSD are officially unsupported. And the "base" installation 
currently lacks features and code, to allow it to even compile on 
GNU/Linux or Solaris ?

> Looking through the existing portfiles, I see gettext which declares 
> it will work on linux, libpng says it will work on linux, freebsd and 
> sunos, and monit claims to work on linux, freebsd, netbsd, openbsd and 
> solaris. In addition to Mac OS X, of course. And, as I say, many ports 
> will probably work on your other OSes, even if they don't declare it. 
> (And if you find that they do work, you can tell us so that we can 
> indicate that the port does work on that platform.)

Probably need to re-inventory these, since some of those flags are 
leftovers from DarwinPorts and not all ports no longer work on systems 
that they claim ? Feel free to post results on porting base or ports 
over to other operating systems on the macports-dev list, I am trying 
to run it on FreeBSD myself.

--anders