running macports along with homebrew

db iamsudo at gmail.com
Thu Aug 31 16:57:47 UTC 2017


On 31 Aug 2017, at 17:53, Ken Cunningham <ken.cunningham.webuse at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think homebrew gets attention for two reasons.
> 
> 
> 1. a one-line copy & paste install command that is pasted into the terminal  (macports could / should do that too, BTW).
> 
> 2. the fact that it symlinks it's stuff into /usr/local, making it easier to use it's installed products for building other software for amateurs (macports could do that too).
> 
> 3. My impression is that it's not so difficult to get things accepted. If a submission builds on Travis on 10.10 to 10.12, it's usually in homebrew within a day or so, it seems.
> 
> On the other hand:
> 
> 1. MacPorts, in general, pays more attention to the details. There is significantly more OCD in the submission reviews, which is both very good and sometimes deflating. But a port in macports is very trustworthy, and in the end, that is the single most important thing.
> 
> 2. MacPorts has a couple of real superstars who can fix things it seems nobody else can fix. So we have gcc6 working perfectly well all the way back to Tiger, for example, and the latest-greatest clang / llvm features, etc.

The first three points are certainly not what appeals to me from homebrew. I do agree on the latter two though.

To give you a couple of examples: vagrant — there's a ticket but the dev seems to haven't finished it, and ipfs — I wrote the port and the ticket's now in the twilight zone, no feedback whatsoever (I have other portfiles that I don't even bother submitting). Both are in homebrew. And as I mentioned earlier, cask has already 3.7K binaries to manage, which is quite convenient.

I don't want to get rid of MacPorts, but complement it without breaking anything.


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