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Please explain. What doesn't work? I've used MacPorts over and over again for the past 2 years without any problems. One of the few annoyances is that MacPorts

Please explain. What doesn't work? I've used MacPorts over and over again for the past 2 years without any problems. One of the few annoyances is that MacPorts will install copies of software that already exist on the system, but that's not really a big deal.

evgen 18y ago
I use macports quite heavily on my box and while I think it is generally a good system I have a few complaints. [I will add the caveat that it has been a long time since I used apt and similar systems so some of these complaints may also exist for the alternatives...] For starters, ports are frequently out of date. It has reached the point where I am maintaining my own local macport sources tree and hand-rolling portfiles for about 50 packages that I care about and need to be up to date. Secondly, the macports system does not deal well with versioned dependencies. If X depends on a version of Y that is at least rev Z there is no way to express this. You end up just saying that X depends on Y and if there has been an update to Y (which you don't particularly need/want) you are going to get it updated if you update X; this leads to a lot of wasted time for me when some app depends on something like gtk and I end up watching the system pull in the new rev of gtk I don't care about and updates to five other X11 packages. The last minor annoyance is that the tcl scripting system does not handle recursive directory copies well (e.g. copying a doc dir or data dir that has multiple subdirs) so you end up using a recursive mkdir & copy * pattern which will then choke if one of the sub-sub-sub dirs is an empty directory. Overall, I like the system and use it quite heavily, but it does have some warts.
moe 18y ago
Well, evgen already provided evidence better than I ever could. My general take would be: The most advanced binary package manager in existence is apt-get. The most advanced build dependency manager is portage. Both have evolved over many years (apt celebrated 10th birthday just recently) and are at the core of their respective distros. MacPorts and fink, on the other hand, are afterthoughts, somewhat akin to strapon-dildos. Fink at least builds on proven technology, MacPorts reinvents the wheel altogether. Neither has performed convincingly for me over the longer term. I was regularly confronted with outdated packages, broken builds or other screwage as soon as I left the beaten path of the few most popular packages. The package situation may have improved recently (my expirience is from 6 months ago) but the parallel universe, second userland issues are inherent. It's just not possible to match the real thing™ by piggybacking a package-manager on top of a system that wasn't designed for it. Even when the package manager is as good as apt.

evgen 18y ago

I use macports quite heavily on my box and while I think it is generally a good system I have a few complaints. [I will add the caveat that it has been a long time since I used apt and similar systems so some of these complaints may also exist for the alternatives...] For starters, ports are frequently out of date. It has reached the point where I am maintaining my own local macport sources tree and hand-rolling portfiles for about 50 packages that I care about and need to be up to date. Secondly, the macports system does not deal well with versioned dependencies. If X depends on a version of Y that is at least rev Z there is no way to express this. You end up just saying that X depends on Y and if there has been an update to Y (which you don't particularly need/want) you are going to get it updated if you update X; this leads to a lot of wasted time for me when some app depends on something like gtk and I end up watching the system pull in the new rev of gtk I don't care about and updates to five other X11 packages. The last minor annoyance is that the tcl scripting system does not handle recursive directory copies well (e.g. copying a doc dir or data dir that has multiple subdirs) so you end up using a recursive mkdir & copy * pattern which will then choke if one of the sub-sub-sub dirs is an empty directory. Overall, I like the system and use it quite heavily, but it does have some warts.

moe 18y ago

Well, evgen already provided evidence better than I ever could. My general take would be: The most advanced binary package manager in existence is apt-get. The most advanced build dependency manager is portage. Both have evolved over many years (apt celebrated 10th birthday just recently) and are at the core of their respective distros. MacPorts and fink, on the other hand, are afterthoughts, somewhat akin to strapon-dildos. Fink at least builds on proven technology, MacPorts reinvents the wheel altogether. Neither has performed convincingly for me over the longer term. I was regularly confronted with outdated packages, broken builds or other screwage as soon as I left the beaten path of the few most popular packages. The package situation may have improved recently (my expirience is from 6 months ago) but the parallel universe, second userland issues are inherent. It's just not possible to match the real thing™ by piggybacking a package-manager on top of a system that wasn't designed for it. Even when the package manager is as good as apt.