Why should I use macports?

[Harald Hanche-Olsen]

+ Randolph Fritz <rfritz333 at gmail.com>:

> On 2009-10-15, Wendy Bossons <wbossons at MIT.EDU> wrote:
> >
> > Can someone explain the purpose of Macports and why I might need it?
> >
> 
> Broadly, because it's an easy-to-use library of useful free
> software. It provides, especially, dependency tracking, which means
> that when you install a package you want, you get the packages that
> that that package depends on automatically, without fuss.

I beg to differ. Over the years I have used macports I have certainly
seen my share of fuss. Enough so that I have started being careful
taking a backup of /opt before doing an update, so I can roll back to
an earlier version if needed. (I haven't needed to yet, but I have
come close to doing it a couple times.)

If you had said a minimum of fuss, I would agree. It's almost
impossible to avoid problems in a system that is dragging in source
code from all over the intertubes the way macports does, and I must
say I am impressed and pleased that I don't see more problems than I
do. But let's not oversell it. "No fuss"? No way.

> The value of the tool depends, of course, on what you are doing, but
> Macports has helped me greatly in my software development work.

Amen to that. I don't do software development myself, but I know
enough about programming that I can generally work my way around most
problems that arise. The typical Mac user, whose idea of software
installation involves dragging a .app to /Applications or double
clicking a .mpkg, will however soon be out of their depths when a port
command fails. And that will happen, if they use many ports and
upgrade regularly.

- Harald