port install efficiency issue

[Bradley Giesbrecht]

On Mar 23, 2009, at 1:08 AM, Frank J. R. Hanstick wrote:

>
> On Mar 23, 2009, at 12:47 AM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>
>>
>> On Mar 22, 2009, at 13:19, Darren Weber wrote:
>>
>>> On balance, I'm both impressed and disappointed with the  
>>> complexity of the macports system to date.  For example,  
>>> dependency resolution needs a lot of work during upgrades, binary  
>>> distributions are a great idea in the making (perhaps forever in  
>>> the making), and the whole issue of dependency on variants is a  
>>> massive conference debate.  I've certainly come across these  
>>> issues and tried to submit reasonable trac suggestions for  
>>> enhancements, etc. on a couple of ports.  My main issue seems to  
>>> be in getting a few ports with a lot of dependencies to cooperate,  
>>> esp. with regard to variants (eg, Qt, Postgresql, MySQL, VTK,  
>>> etc.).  I do think that package maintainers should think very  
>>> carefully about their default variants and try to provide as many  
>>> options as possible - that seems to be the way with Debian packages.
>>
>> Mac OS X is not Debian. The Mac way is to provide not as many  
>> options as possible, but as few options as possible. Meet the needs  
>> of most of the users with the default setup, and provide a few  
>> options for everyone else.

A wonderful tradeoff.

Macports also makes it VERY easy to create a local port when the port  
doesn't meet your needs.

>> As a consumer, I do not enjoy having to select amongst 37 different  
>> types of toothpaste at the grocery store. More choices is not  
>> always better.

I like 3 :)

>> http://www.cafeaulait.org/images/remotes.png
>>
> Hello,
> 	The Mac way is to provide plug and play which includes software as  
> well as hardware.
> Frank J. R. Hanstick


The Mac way is to hide the complexity.


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