4 ms·

Why is a package manager useful? (I really don't know what's wrong with the default environment of OSX, if there's anything wrong at all.)

by iaskwhy 15y ago

evilduck 15y ago
If you're coming from a linux environment, you're probably used to having Apt or Yum available. OSX has no built in package manager so you've either got go out and find compiled binaries somewhere or install from source, both of which are tedious and searching the web for it is time consuming vs. the `brew install wget` commands that you can probably guess and it'll take care of installation in the background while you do something else. See here for stuff you can install with one command: https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/tree/master/Library/Formula/ https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/tree/master/Library/Formula...
- iaskwhy 15y ago
  Oh, I see, so you cannot use yum on OSX? I never realised it (or its packages) wouldn't be compatible.
  - evilduck 15y ago
    No, Yum isn't available or compatible, it's coupled to Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS linux distributions like Apt is coupled to Debian/Ubuntu/Mint distributions. Homebrew/MacPorts/Fink are nearly the same thing, they just don't come installed by default on OSX.
    - iaskwhy 15y ago
      Got it! Thank you!
systemtrigger 15y ago
Speed and reliability. Take open source. You could manually find, download, untar, configure, make, install and track dependencies. A good package manager lets you do that in one command e.g.: $ brew install package_name OSX includes a package manager for proprietary packages blessed by Apple. It's fast and reliable but its curators forbid most open source and proprietary packages. It's called App Store.
- evilduck 15y ago
  Ignoring the problem of software availability, the App Store also lacks a fast command line interface. I can kick off a homebrew package install process and return to whatever I was doing faster than the App Store.app launches.

Why is a package manager useful? (I really don't know what's wrong with the default environment of OSX, if there's anything wrong at all.)

by iaskwhy 15y ago

Why is a package manager useful? (I really don't know what's wrong with the default environment of OSX, if there's anything wrong at all.)

evilduck 15y ago

If you're coming from a linux environment, you're probably used to having Apt or Yum available. OSX has no built in package manager so you've either got go out and find compiled binaries somewhere or install from source, both of which are tedious and searching the web for it is time consuming vs. the `brew install wget` commands that you can probably guess and it'll take care of installation in the background while you do something else. See here for stuff you can install with one command: https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/tree/master/Library/Formula/ https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/tree/master/Library/Formula...

iaskwhy 15y ago
Oh, I see, so you cannot use yum on OSX? I never realised it (or its packages) wouldn't be compatible.
- evilduck 15y ago
  No, Yum isn't available or compatible, it's coupled to Red Hat/Fedora/CentOS linux distributions like Apt is coupled to Debian/Ubuntu/Mint distributions. Homebrew/MacPorts/Fink are nearly the same thing, they just don't come installed by default on OSX.
  - iaskwhy 15y ago
    Got it! Thank you!

systemtrigger 15y ago

Speed and reliability. Take open source. You could manually find, download, untar, configure, make, install and track dependencies. A good package manager lets you do that in one command e.g.: $ brew install package_name OSX includes a package manager for proprietary packages blessed by Apple. It's fast and reliable but its curators forbid most open source and proprietary packages. It's called App Store.

evilduck 15y ago
Ignoring the problem of software availability, the App Store also lacks a fast command line interface. I can kick off a homebrew package install process and return to whatever I was doing faster than the App Store.app launches.