Side effects?

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Jan 31, 2013, at 17:26, Kevin Walzer wrote:
> On 1/31/13 6:11 PM, James Linder wrote:
>> CLI does the job nicely and well, why on earth would you seek to make an easy, automateable task hard/impossible.
> 
> Here are a few things that a GUI can do that the CLI cannot:
> 
> 1. Filter ports by category. port offers no way to see all the "aqua" ports, for instance.

Sure it can.

$ port list category:aqua
abiword                        @2.4.5          editors/abiword
ackmate                        @1.1.2          editors/ackmate
adium                          @1.3.0          net/adium
AppHack                        @1.1            aqua/AppHack
AppKiDo                        @0.988          aqua/AppKiDo
AquaLess                       @1.6            aqua/AquaLess
aquaterm                       @1.1.1          aqua/aquaterm
arora                          @0.11.0         www/arora
ArpSpyX                        @1.1            aqua/ArpSpyX
^C

MacPorts can filter on tons of things. It even has Boolean logic. How about:

$ port echo name:^php and not maintainer:ryandesign
php-gearman                     
php-gtk                         
php-igbinary                    
php-midgard2                    
php-mode.el                     
php-suhosin                     
php-Twig                        
php-uuid                  
^C


> 2. Browse and sort ports visually. "port list" dumps all available ports to the Terminal, but you can't sort them with a single click.

"port list" lists those ports you've asked it to list; if you don't ask it to list anything specific, it lists them all. True, sorting in the terminal is more cumbersome.


> 3. Get the homepage of a port with a click. A GUI can format web pages as hyperlinks, but "port info" can't.

But we do have "port gohome" which takes you to a port's homepage.


> 4. Save yourself from fat-fingering the command invocation to install a particular port.
> 
> CLI is an essential tool, and for uber-power-users it may be easier than a GUI. But for a high-level view of MacPorts, the GUI is better, in my view.

Even I find many of my interactions with MacPorts on the command line repetitive and needing much too much typing; a GUI could make some tasks easier.