Prompt what package to install when it is missing

[Peng Yu]

On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 1:53 PM, Phillip Koebbe
<phillip.koebbe at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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.

I was not taking about the general question as you mentioned. A
smaller step is to just prompt macport packages.


-- 
Regards,
Peng