usage numbers for macports vs. homebrew?

[Eric A. Borisch]

On Tue, Mar 18, 2014 at 2:27 PM, Landon Fuller <landonf at macports.org> wrote:

> They seemed to acquire a *lot* of traction on the basis of marketing;
> specifically:
> - Truthiness (an assortment of "advantages" that turned out not to be,
> claims that ignored technical accuracy and nuance, and claims quite simply
> rooted in ignorance), and
> - Outright negative advertising ("MacPorts driving you to drink?")
>
> It's a new brand of open-source that I don't really recognize and can't
> say I like; it detracts from the community's ability to collaborate
> productivity, and undermines the objective, rational honesty that should be
> at the core of any engineering endeavor.
>
> I don't really know how to raise the level of discourse; it's far more
> expensive to counter to truthiness and negativity than it is to generate it
> in the first place. Nowadays, people who have never even used MacPorts will
> repeat verbatim the negative advertising propagated by Homebrew.
>
> I find the whole thing distasteful.
>
> -landonf
>

+1 to the sentiment.

However, perhaps we should take a page from their book. Look at the
homebrew homepage (http://brew.sh/)

 * It would be nice a similar minimalist, "here is what macports does for
you" landing page.
 * A one line copy-and-paste install option to get a new user going would
be nice, too. It could check for and prompt the user for XCode, etc before
actually installing. I assume this is what theirs does.
 * A simple 'port create <url>' that would create a "typical" Portfile
(configure / make / make install) in a auto-generated local location (and
properly setup sources.conf) and then open the new portfile in Editor
(perhaps with some helpful comments on things that might need tweaking)

A fair and concise comparison of the approaches a would be nice to have
somewhere beyond this mailing list.

Alternative, a 'homebrew porting layer' (use homebrew formula in MP with
minimal / no modification) might help, but I don't imagine anyone is
looking to take on that amount of work.

I also don't think we've done enough to publicize the phenomenal impact the
build bots have on a "typical install scenario" -- and to emphasize the
"you need to use the defaults" if you want binary package usage.

Just my 2c.

I do with they'd drop their slogan.. Alternatively, <childish> we could
counter with '(Hungover on|Bad batch of) Homebrew?' </childish>

 - Eric
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