MacPorts 1.5.0 and binary packaging / New improved Guide

[Anders F Björklund]

Ryan Schmidt wrote:

> I would counter that being Apple- and Mac-centric is a good thing. The 
> project name was deliberately changed from DarwinPorts to MacPorts to 
> emphasize the fact that it's designed for Mac users. MacPorts has so 
> far not been so easy for the typical non-UNIX-geek Mac user to 
> understand, so I would consider being Mac-specific in the 
> documentation to be a good thing. I'm not sure if anything 
> non-Mac-centric needs to be said in the documentation, other than at 
> most a sentence in the introduction stating that the project is 
> designed for Macs, that it may work on other OSes, but that this is 
> not guaranteed.

There is a difference between not actively supporting use on other 
platforms, and actively discouraging using the product on other 
platforms (whether by code or by words)...

Don't get me wrong here, I don't think there is anything wrong 
whatsoever with using Apple and Mac terms to describe how you install 
MacPorts on Apple Mac OS X. But everywhere? Nah.

> I haven't actually looked at the guide yet, but wanted to make the 
> above comments anyway.

Please do then, we're talking about something minor like changing 
"Installing MacPorts" to "Installing MacPorts on Mac OS X" and avoiding 
limiting the entire system to just the Apple Macs.

Don't see how "Mac OS X and other platforms" or "Apple or other 
vendors" would hurt anything. Unless the project clearly defines that 
it will remove all old code for Darwin and for FreeBSD.

--anders