Prompt what package to install when it is missing

[Phillip Koebbe]

On Nov 11, 2011, at 1:02 PM, Peng Yu wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> On ubuntu, it can prompt me what to do if a package is missing. I'm
> wondering if there is anything similar on mac.
> 
> ~$ hg
> The program 'hg' is currently not installed.  You can install it by typing:
> sudo apt-get install mercurial
> 

Since Ubuntu is based on Debian, it's built around APT and knows what's installed. I know of nothing built-in, either in the Mac OS or in MacPorts, that could do the same thing. Since there are various ways of installing software on a Mac (download a dmg/pkg, Mac App Store, MacPorts, Homebrew, self-compile, etc), and you can have software installed in various places (/opt, /sw, /usr/local, /Applications, ~/Applications, etc), I'm inclined to think it would be quite difficult to pull off for a third party application.

But, those are just my thoughts and they could be quite wrong.

Peace,
Phillip