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Or instead of all this, try MacPorts[0], which in my experience has 99% of what you need. The biggest drawbacks are less support from quite niche packages (the

Or instead of all this, try MacPorts[0], which in my experience has 99% of what you need. The biggest drawbacks are less support from quite niche packages (the ones that sets up its own homebrew tap), and a bit slower updates. But then I found it bearable much more than homebrew’s downsides. [0]: https://macports.org https://macports.org

oneplane 4y ago
The Gist's contents apply to macports too, but instead of only clobbering /usr/local or /opt it does both.
- pcr910303 4y ago
  Hmm… can you elaborate? AFAIK MacPorts never touches outside /opt/local in it’s default configuration, and it requires sudo, so it doesn’t have the finicky permission problems that homebrew had on multiuser systems.
  - oneplane 4y ago
    Back in the PowerPC days (when I used Fink and later switched to MacPorts) it often didn't integrate with any expected paths that were used when building software. This meant that you either have to symlink things in yourself or have a persistent directory symlink to make sure any ports you installed could be picked up by other software. Similar problems happened the other way around if MacPorts was first in your path as your includes couldn't find the system files anymore since it was looking for files relative to the files you found in /opt/local. Regarding the permission problem: have never had any issue, but that's probably because I don't mix multiple users and developer tools.
    - yunohn 4y ago
      You made an unsupported assertion about Macports, based on your experience from “the PowerPC days”? I don’t even use Macports, but that’s just plain unfair.
      - oneplane 4y ago
        I described the origin of the current situation. Considering you are not a consumer of MacPorts there is no point of reference for you, so you would not know how the current inadequacies came to be. Trying to judge the fairness of a technical aspect of a piece of software as a non-user seems rather pointless, don't you agree?
        yunohn 4y ago
        Absolutely, I don’t claim to understand the technical aspects as a non-user. I was making an observation based on the fact that PowerPC Macs were discontinued in 2006 and homebrew was created in 2016. So Macports (or other) could’ve changed things in the last 16yrs, which have been quite transformational for computers and software.
        oneplane 4y ago
        While some issues have been solved, a lot of them simply migrated from the core ports system to the ports themselves. The difference in goals and tooling between the dpkg (Fink for macOS), ports (MacPorts for macOS) and brew systems seems to make all the remaining volunteers flow towards brew as the work required to fix ports is either harder, or getting the fix into MacPorts is harder. And sine Fink is dead, there is no dpkg-way to try out anymore. I think RPM was never tried, and Nix is still an option but since you'll end up learning functional programming to use it, it won't get the hold the Nix-enjoyers seem to enjoy. Maybe Guix can inspire something, but I think the bar to entry with brew is really hard to beat. The end result is broken and/or outdated ports, and even with the fixes post-macOS Forge the lack of content and port-fixes just makes it a non-starter when things like brew exist.
b3morales 4y ago
It's also not too much trouble (albeit a little annoying mostly because of TCL) but to have local port definitions for anything you need that isn't in the tree: https://guide.macports.org/#development.local-repositories https://guide.macports.org/#development.local-repositories
kitsunesoba 4y ago
I might try MacPorts again next time I do a fresh OS install. Last time I used it was back in the mid-late 2000s, before my technical capabilities were decent (could only barely write code and was basically clueless about the GNU toolchain and the like) and at that point, MacPorts packages were frequently broken and would sometimes remain that way for long stretches of time, with the only fixes being manually applied local patches (if they existed at all). It was very frustrating, and so when Homebrew came around and packages generally "just worked" I was an instant convert. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of other people who were newbies during that time span have similar stories.
- kergonath 4y ago
  > MacPorts packages were frequently broken and would sometimes remain that way for long stretches of time, with the only fixes being manually applied local patches (if they existed at all) That was my experience as well a couple of years ago, with some quite painful OS transitions. Still, I’ve been using it for I think a decade now, and I cannot remember any problem in the last 4 years or so. It does not have everything as Homebrew is the cool kid and cool devs do not care about anything else, but it is solid. And last time I looked it had a much more sensible way of working than brew and a better security model, even if it leads to some duplication in the installed packages.

oneplane 4y ago

The Gist's contents apply to macports too, but instead of only clobbering /usr/local or /opt it does both.

pcr910303 4y ago
Hmm… can you elaborate? AFAIK MacPorts never touches outside /opt/local in it’s default configuration, and it requires sudo, so it doesn’t have the finicky permission problems that homebrew had on multiuser systems.
- oneplane 4y ago
  Back in the PowerPC days (when I used Fink and later switched to MacPorts) it often didn't integrate with any expected paths that were used when building software. This meant that you either have to symlink things in yourself or have a persistent directory symlink to make sure any ports you installed could be picked up by other software. Similar problems happened the other way around if MacPorts was first in your path as your includes couldn't find the system files anymore since it was looking for files relative to the files you found in /opt/local. Regarding the permission problem: have never had any issue, but that's probably because I don't mix multiple users and developer tools.
  - yunohn 4y ago
    You made an unsupported assertion about Macports, based on your experience from “the PowerPC days”? I don’t even use Macports, but that’s just plain unfair.
    - oneplane 4y ago
      I described the origin of the current situation. Considering you are not a consumer of MacPorts there is no point of reference for you, so you would not know how the current inadequacies came to be. Trying to judge the fairness of a technical aspect of a piece of software as a non-user seems rather pointless, don't you agree?
      - yunohn 4y ago
        Absolutely, I don’t claim to understand the technical aspects as a non-user. I was making an observation based on the fact that PowerPC Macs were discontinued in 2006 and homebrew was created in 2016. So Macports (or other) could’ve changed things in the last 16yrs, which have been quite transformational for computers and software.
        oneplane 4y ago
        While some issues have been solved, a lot of them simply migrated from the core ports system to the ports themselves. The difference in goals and tooling between the dpkg (Fink for macOS), ports (MacPorts for macOS) and brew systems seems to make all the remaining volunteers flow towards brew as the work required to fix ports is either harder, or getting the fix into MacPorts is harder. And sine Fink is dead, there is no dpkg-way to try out anymore. I think RPM was never tried, and Nix is still an option but since you'll end up learning functional programming to use it, it won't get the hold the Nix-enjoyers seem to enjoy. Maybe Guix can inspire something, but I think the bar to entry with brew is really hard to beat. The end result is broken and/or outdated ports, and even with the fixes post-macOS Forge the lack of content and port-fixes just makes it a non-starter when things like brew exist.

b3morales 4y ago

It's also not too much trouble (albeit a little annoying mostly because of TCL) but to have local port definitions for anything you need that isn't in the tree: https://guide.macports.org/#development.local-repositories https://guide.macports.org/#development.local-repositories

kitsunesoba 4y ago

I might try MacPorts again next time I do a fresh OS install. Last time I used it was back in the mid-late 2000s, before my technical capabilities were decent (could only barely write code and was basically clueless about the GNU toolchain and the like) and at that point, MacPorts packages were frequently broken and would sometimes remain that way for long stretches of time, with the only fixes being manually applied local patches (if they existed at all). It was very frustrating, and so when Homebrew came around and packages generally "just worked" I was an instant convert. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of other people who were newbies during that time span have similar stories.

kergonath 4y ago
> MacPorts packages were frequently broken and would sometimes remain that way for long stretches of time, with the only fixes being manually applied local patches (if they existed at all) That was my experience as well a couple of years ago, with some quite painful OS transitions. Still, I’ve been using it for I think a decade now, and I cannot remember any problem in the last 4 years or so. It does not have everything as Homebrew is the cool kid and cool devs do not care about anything else, but it is solid. And last time I looked it had a much more sensible way of working than brew and a better security model, even if it leads to some duplication in the installed packages.