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I feel you are being unfair about the uninformed rant. Picking at a couple of things I know about: 1) I've tried installing both Macports and homebrew, and som

I feel you are being unfair about the uninformed rant. Picking at a couple of things I know about: 1) I've tried installing both Macports and homebrew, and some utils did not work, as whichever got put in the path first, confused the other. I suppose I could have made a seperate symlink directory, for just the binaries I wanted. 2) I found 'brew install coreutils' broke some build scripts , which expected proper mac tools, if I put them all in path. 3) I find about 10% of the time I try to install something from brew, it fails to build. g++ 4.6 failed just 20 minutes ago. That is a real pain. I can't comment on the memory, except that I find my 4GB of RAM seems to go much further when I dual-boot my macbook into Linux. It might happen to be the programs that I run.

_delirium 15y ago
I agree on package management; I haven't used Homebrew, but I definitely find MacPorts breakage much more often than I find Debian breakage, even in Debian sid/unstable.
- chrisrhoden 15y ago
  I have literally never had a problem with Homebrew.
  - sophacles 15y ago
    I have had a few, but largely they were easy to resolve. One thing I dislike about about homebrew over apt (and similar) is that it requires a fairly unpolished workflow to do personal mods and patches on a package, while the apt tool-chain allows for this stuff in a fairly polished (if idiosyncratic) way.
    - lloeki 15y ago
      > it requires a fairly unpolished workflow I find it quite the contrary as it summons git power upon /usr/local. So the workflow is basically just editing live in /usr/local/Library/Formula ('brew create url' scaffolds in many cases, 'brew edit formula' gets you to an existing one), committing, and handling merges on pull (which is what 'brew update' does) If you want to contribute back, fork on github and add your repo as a remote, then push and submit a pull request. It's really different than apt (which it is normal as Debian packaging has a massively different scope) , but IMHO much, much simpler and efficient.
- ldh 15y ago
  My experience with Homebrew has been a world of improvement over MacPorts. Every time I'd try to update things with MacPorts I might as well have started filing an issue ahead of time. Homebrew rarely requires additional intervention.
lloeki 15y ago
1) You could also create some wrapper scripts setting the path, or have someting inspired by virtualenv handle it, or maybe different terminal profiles. Those breakings really are edge cases. 2) Don't put them in the PATH. They're prefixed with 'g' so you can make an non-prefixed alias for your interactive shell, and use the prefixed variant in your scripts if need be. If you write portable scripts you're either using common features or use some vars for those utils, aren't you? 3) g++? that's not in homebrew... Honestly though, MacPorts is a real pain. That's why I worked with others to bring Arch's pacman on OSX (dubbed ArchOSX) some years ago, but binary hosting was proving being a chore, and then Homebrew started taking off, and in my case Just Works.
- brown9-2 15y ago
  I'm curious, what are some of the pains you've had with MacPorts? I've been using it for about 8 months with no real issues, but then again I'm not a C/C++/native developer.
  - zbuc 15y ago
    I've had it fail to install packages for me before, forcing me to grab them from source, modify the source with patches, and compile by hand. I've been using Homebrew for about a year and haven't ever had an issue like that.
- bad_user 15y ago
  3) g++? that's not in homebrew... He probably meant GCC, which does have recipes in Homebrew. Homebrew started taking off, and in my case Just Works This is the first time I ever heard anyone saying it. In general Homebrew did a good job for me, but it did break on me a couple of times. And when it did, fixing it caused me a lot of stress, because in the end it's really not much better than "./configure && make && sudo make install". What I don't understand is how come we can't have binary repositories, like Debian's. Certainly Debian has to handle much more architectures and the number of packages contained is really huge. So how come there isn't such an alternative for Mac OS X? Why are solutions like Homebrew and MacPorts insisting on compiling the packages locally?
nsomaru 15y ago
Any advice on how to acheive this? I have a slight edge-case, where I would like to install Debian Mint onto a 32GB flash drive, and boot from that. I have a Macbook Air and disk space is at a premium. Googling around has been to no avail. If it's possible (though absolutely not necessary) – my OSX and Debian files could be shared when booted into either – that would be great!
- mgcross 15y ago
  You might need an external optical drive to install to the flash drive. But booting from USB may be difficult. You could try reFit http://refit.sourceforge.net/ http://refit.sourceforge.net/
- lloeki 15y ago
  > my OSX and Debian files could be shared when booted into either You can but you'll have to share data on a non-journaled HFS+ partition for it to be writable from Linux. Watch out for UIDs/GIDs: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBook#Home_Sharing https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBook#Home_Sharing ArchLinux has their img booting from usb, so I don't see why not.
batista 15y ago
I've tried installing both Macports and homebrew, and some utils did not work, as whichever got put in the path first, confused the other. I suppose I could have made a seperate symlink directory, for just the binaries I wanted. Yeah, you could. Also, why install both? Anyway, welcome to software. It ain't perfect. You think it'll be better with Linux? I've had happen to me on Debian a few times, and lotsa times with RPMs. But even if it does not happen, there are several other software you cannot install on Linux, like, all Mac Cocoa Apps, from iWork to Photoshop. If you don't care about having access to those, then you don't need OS X in the first place. I found 'brew install coreutils' broke some build scripts , which expected proper mac tools, if I put them all in path. So, you generally wanted a Mac in order to install large quantities of third party unix software in the core system on top of same regular binaries???? Do you go install FreeBSD and then add a Linux userland? Do you install Debian/Ubuntu etc and then go change the system, say, Python? Because people that tried it also found it's a world of pain. I can't comment on the memory, except that I find my 4GB of RAM seems to go much further when I dual-boot my macbook into Linux. It might happen to be the programs that I run. You're doing it wrong.
- WayneDB 15y ago
  So, you generally wanted a Mac in order to install large quantities of third party unix software... Most software developers that use OS X just want a decent GUI on top of Unix. So yeah, they do generally want a Mac in order to install large quantities of third party Unix software. Do you install Debian/Ubuntu etc and then go change the system, say, Python? Yes. I have had no problems with it. You're doing it wrong. You're probably not doing enough to notice that memory usage absolutely sucks under OS X.
  - calloc 15y ago
    I am a software developer and I use Mac OS X. I develop Unix backend server systems. I use Mac OS X as my primary build platform, then actually run on top of FreeBSD. I use homebrew for almost all of the dependencies that I have, there are one or two that I compile by hand. I've not had any issues. Best of all, I don't need the g* stuff to do my builds. I am perfectly happy with clang and the BSD tools available. I don't understand why people purchase Mac OS X based computers then want to run GNU coreutils on top of it, or want to Linuxize their entire install. Off course something is going to break at that point, especially when build tools expect certain versions of certain tools to be available.
seclorum 15y ago
A great way to run Linux on Apple hardware: boot native. Bonus points for then using working, legal, VM's for the OSX moments. Or, if you like, just boot from a removable linux SSD for work, reboot for OSX.

_delirium 15y ago

I agree on package management; I haven't used Homebrew, but I definitely find MacPorts breakage much more often than I find Debian breakage, even in Debian sid/unstable.

chrisrhoden 15y ago
I have literally never had a problem with Homebrew.
- sophacles 15y ago
  I have had a few, but largely they were easy to resolve. One thing I dislike about about homebrew over apt (and similar) is that it requires a fairly unpolished workflow to do personal mods and patches on a package, while the apt tool-chain allows for this stuff in a fairly polished (if idiosyncratic) way.
  - lloeki 15y ago
    > it requires a fairly unpolished workflow I find it quite the contrary as it summons git power upon /usr/local. So the workflow is basically just editing live in /usr/local/Library/Formula ('brew create url' scaffolds in many cases, 'brew edit formula' gets you to an existing one), committing, and handling merges on pull (which is what 'brew update' does) If you want to contribute back, fork on github and add your repo as a remote, then push and submit a pull request. It's really different than apt (which it is normal as Debian packaging has a massively different scope) , but IMHO much, much simpler and efficient.
ldh 15y ago
My experience with Homebrew has been a world of improvement over MacPorts. Every time I'd try to update things with MacPorts I might as well have started filing an issue ahead of time. Homebrew rarely requires additional intervention.

lloeki 15y ago

1) You could also create some wrapper scripts setting the path, or have someting inspired by virtualenv handle it, or maybe different terminal profiles. Those breakings really are edge cases. 2) Don't put them in the PATH. They're prefixed with 'g' so you can make an non-prefixed alias for your interactive shell, and use the prefixed variant in your scripts if need be. If you write portable scripts you're either using common features or use some vars for those utils, aren't you? 3) g++? that's not in homebrew... Honestly though, MacPorts is a real pain. That's why I worked with others to bring Arch's pacman on OSX (dubbed ArchOSX) some years ago, but binary hosting was proving being a chore, and then Homebrew started taking off, and in my case Just Works.

brown9-2 15y ago
I'm curious, what are some of the pains you've had with MacPorts? I've been using it for about 8 months with no real issues, but then again I'm not a C/C++/native developer.
- zbuc 15y ago
  I've had it fail to install packages for me before, forcing me to grab them from source, modify the source with patches, and compile by hand. I've been using Homebrew for about a year and haven't ever had an issue like that.
bad_user 15y ago
3) g++? that's not in homebrew... He probably meant GCC, which does have recipes in Homebrew. Homebrew started taking off, and in my case Just Works This is the first time I ever heard anyone saying it. In general Homebrew did a good job for me, but it did break on me a couple of times. And when it did, fixing it caused me a lot of stress, because in the end it's really not much better than "./configure && make && sudo make install". What I don't understand is how come we can't have binary repositories, like Debian's. Certainly Debian has to handle much more architectures and the number of packages contained is really huge. So how come there isn't such an alternative for Mac OS X? Why are solutions like Homebrew and MacPorts insisting on compiling the packages locally?

nsomaru 15y ago

Any advice on how to acheive this? I have a slight edge-case, where I would like to install Debian Mint onto a 32GB flash drive, and boot from that. I have a Macbook Air and disk space is at a premium. Googling around has been to no avail. If it's possible (though absolutely not necessary) – my OSX and Debian files could be shared when booted into either – that would be great!

mgcross 15y ago
You might need an external optical drive to install to the flash drive. But booting from USB may be difficult. You could try reFit http://refit.sourceforge.net/ http://refit.sourceforge.net/
lloeki 15y ago
> my OSX and Debian files could be shared when booted into either You can but you'll have to share data on a non-journaled HFS+ partition for it to be writable from Linux. Watch out for UIDs/GIDs: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBook#Home_Sharing https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBook#Home_Sharing ArchLinux has their img booting from usb, so I don't see why not.

batista 15y ago

I've tried installing both Macports and homebrew, and some utils did not work, as whichever got put in the path first, confused the other. I suppose I could have made a seperate symlink directory, for just the binaries I wanted. Yeah, you could. Also, why install both? Anyway, welcome to software. It ain't perfect. You think it'll be better with Linux? I've had happen to me on Debian a few times, and lotsa times with RPMs. But even if it does not happen, there are several other software you cannot install on Linux, like, all Mac Cocoa Apps, from iWork to Photoshop. If you don't care about having access to those, then you don't need OS X in the first place. I found 'brew install coreutils' broke some build scripts , which expected proper mac tools, if I put them all in path. So, you generally wanted a Mac in order to install large quantities of third party unix software in the core system on top of same regular binaries???? Do you go install FreeBSD and then add a Linux userland? Do you install Debian/Ubuntu etc and then go change the system, say, Python? Because people that tried it also found it's a world of pain. I can't comment on the memory, except that I find my 4GB of RAM seems to go much further when I dual-boot my macbook into Linux. It might happen to be the programs that I run. You're doing it wrong.

WayneDB 15y ago
So, you generally wanted a Mac in order to install large quantities of third party unix software... Most software developers that use OS X just want a decent GUI on top of Unix. So yeah, they do generally want a Mac in order to install large quantities of third party Unix software. Do you install Debian/Ubuntu etc and then go change the system, say, Python? Yes. I have had no problems with it. You're doing it wrong. You're probably not doing enough to notice that memory usage absolutely sucks under OS X.
- calloc 15y ago
  I am a software developer and I use Mac OS X. I develop Unix backend server systems. I use Mac OS X as my primary build platform, then actually run on top of FreeBSD. I use homebrew for almost all of the dependencies that I have, there are one or two that I compile by hand. I've not had any issues. Best of all, I don't need the g* stuff to do my builds. I am perfectly happy with clang and the BSD tools available. I don't understand why people purchase Mac OS X based computers then want to run GNU coreutils on top of it, or want to Linuxize their entire install. Off course something is going to break at that point, especially when build tools expect certain versions of certain tools to be available.

seclorum 15y ago

A great way to run Linux on Apple hardware: boot native. Bonus points for then using working, legal, VM's for the OSX moments. Or, if you like, just boot from a removable linux SSD for work, reboot for OSX.