port install efficiency issue

[Anders F Björklund]

Ryan Schmidt wrote:

>> * I was under the impression Mac Ports was sort of to replace  
>> Fink, is that not the case?  What are the pros and cons,  
>> differences?  Is Fink still active?
>
> Fink and MacPorts are both package management systems for Mac OS X.  
> I myself switched from Fink to what is now MacPorts years ago,  
> because I started having problems with Fink when Tiger was  
> released. But I think Fink is still alive. Their web site is:
>
> http://www.finkproject.org/


There's probably some communication issues between the projects
here, since Fink also thinks that MacPorts is (barely) alive:

http://www.finkproject.org/faq/relations.php?phpLang=en#darwinports

"Q2.4: What is your relation with Darwinports?"
"A: Darwinports and Fink are complementary projects. There is some
overlap between the two projects, and several people contribute to
both the Fink and DarwinPorts projects. [...]" (l.c. 14 March 2009)


Both Fink and MacPorts are probably more of "software management"
systems than "package management" systems, but that's another story.
Fink uses DEB packages, while MacPorts uses more simplistic archives
like tarballs. There's some earlier work to make MP use RPM instead.

If you are careful, it is also possible to use both systems at once -
since they use different install prefixes: /sw versus /opt/local...
You can't have both of them in PATH or the rest of the System though,
and linking e.g. libraries between them is not a good idea either.

--anders