I had a similar experience. I started out with macports, which seemed more familiar to me as a user of Linux package managers. But macports kept breaking in wei

I had a similar experience. I started out with macports, which seemed more familiar to me as a user of Linux package managers. But macports kept breaking in weird ways, until I finally tried homebrew, which didn't break. That was years ago, so maybe macports is better now, but homebrew has never given me a reason to switch away from it.