Why doesn't macports install prebuild packages?

[Frank J. R. Hanstick]

Hello,
	One reason I chose MacPorts over Fink was that there were more ports  
available.  That may or may not be true now because I have not used  
Fink in a while.  Unless Fink had changed, there were still a lot of  
ports that came with assembly required.  Not all ports came as  
packages.  I am not familiar with how many different cpu's Linux is  
built for, so I cannot comment on that.  My current platform is a dual  
MPC-7448 (G4 model) which is still not a well supported cpu under  
Linux.  I will probably continue using a G4 system for a while because  
I prefer the cpu (I do not need the extended precision of a G5).
	I prefer MacPorts over doing it myself because someone greatly  
appreciated ensured that all the dependencies were taken care of  
beforehand.  I spent many hours having to figure out what dependencies  
were required for what ports and what version of a particular  
dependency was required.  MacPorts is a great time saver there.
	A feature in Fink that I liked was the notification of what  
dependencies were being loaded before hand which gave an indication of  
how long the installation would be.  I do not like the fact that  
MacPorts does nothing to indicate that it is working an installation.   
I would prefer to have little dots or the title of the current module  
appear in the terminal window to alleviate the boredom and give a  
notation of progress (I do not like the repeated compilation lines  
from a non-MacPorts installation because it eats up my history space).
	Nothing is ever perfect and each has good and bad features.

On Nov 26, 2009, at 3:29 AM, Benjamin Dahl - post at bennyd.de wrote:

> This could be truly a problem, but I think it would be the way for
> either better usibility and better success of macports in the future,
> because easy to use package managers with a friendly GUI are imho one
> reason why the latest Linux-Distibutions earn more and more attention
> also with the non-advanced users.
> I think the problem is, that one would rather like installing and
> uninstalling packages quickly than waiting while the computer needs  
> ages
> to compile the stuff everytime itself, but knowing others don't have  
> to
> care about three versions of a package.
> I mean, why isn't that a problem with fink or debian or what else  
> dist?
> Is it just a question of server recources?
>
> [b]
>
> Am 26.11.09 03:17 schrieb Frank J. R. Hanstick:
>> Hello,
>>    Wouldn't the problem be how many different packages would be on  
>> hand
>> for different systems and how long each of the packages would need  
>> to be
>> maintained?
>>
>> On Nov 25, 2009, at 2:22 AM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On Nov 25, 2009, at 04:09, Benjamin Dahl wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'm using macports for a while, but what I haven't understood yet  
>>>> is,
>>>> why macports everytime needs to compile the packages instead of
>>>> installing prebuild ones. I would love if it did it like fink or  
>>>> like
>>>> apt on ubuntu. Would this be possible for the future?
>>>
>>> We would love this as well, and have wanted it for years. So far,
>>> nobody has contributed the necessary code to make it happen.
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> macports-users mailing list
>>> macports-users at lists.macosforge.org
>>> http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/macports-users
>>
>> Frank J. R. Hanstick
>> trog24 at comcast.net
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> macports-users mailing list
>> macports-users at lists.macosforge.org
>> http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/macports-users
>>
>
> -- 
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>        benjamin.dahl at gestaltung.uni-weimar.de
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>
> Finished studies in »Visual Communications«
> at Bauhaus University Weimar, Germany
>

Frank J. R. Hanstick
trog24 at comcast.net