running macports along with homebrew

[Ken Cunningham]

On 2018-02-14, at 5:56 AM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:


> We will definitely never offer a user-facing feature for building the HEAD version of a port's code. 


I completely recognize why you stick with this, I totally get it, but this caution is costing MacPorts both users and mindshare to do so... some people want this, and so will go elsewhere to get it.

In a recent poll <https://www.slant.co/versus/1588/1674/~macports_vs_homebrew>, homebrew was recommended 375 to 25 over MacPorts.

Most developers who offer their software for download and building manually recommend homebrew for supporting software. Almost nobody recommends MacPorts.



Reasons for this are likely to be:

1. a one-line copy-paste install script that can be embedded into any webpage.

2. symlinks into /usr/local therefore:
    a) no adjustments needed to path
    b) no need for sudo
    c) third-party apps, libraries, and xcode projects can be downloaded and built or run, and the system looks there by default, so need no modification to build or run. 

3. you can easily build the +HEAD version of a git project to try out newest changes as a beta tester


IMHO, the two biggest reasons homebrew is heavily recommended are #1 and #2c. I think it's just good that we all know this.

Question:

Is there anything that would stop someone from installing macports into /usr/local , should they desire to do so? That would fix up all the issues with sudo, path, and 2c.

Ken