I've used DarwinPorts and Fink before. What do you use and why? Or, do you prefer to just build from source?
+1
A:
I've been using DarwinPorts, mainly because of Jordan Hubbard's involvement (former FreeBSD core developer).
DGentry
2008-10-10 02:31:28
+7
A:
I use MacPorts because Fink wasn't kept up to date. However, it's missing some packages compared to Fink, I find the command interface less usable, and I've encountered packages that won't build correctly.
MacPorts is the best of a bad bunch. Oh well.
Rich
2008-10-10 02:52:57
+4
A:
I used to use MacPorts but more recently have been just using the source and building locally. The problem I kept running into with MacPorts and Fink was that sometimes the package I wanted to get had only been built against an older version of other libraries so it would want to install a bunch of older dependencies to get the one simple thing I wanted working.
This was really a problem when it came to simple Python libraries: I'd try to install some Python library from MacPorts which had only been "built" against 2.4 and I only had 2.5 installed so MacPorts would pull down and install the full Python 2.4 distro along with the library.
I'm finding most source distros "just work" on OS X these days so it hasn't been a big problem.
davidavr
2008-10-10 12:53:06
Thanks for the link. I wonder why SO didn't show this when I crafted the question?
Andrew Hedges
2008-10-11 07:38:12
The similar questions routine seems to need so tweaking. Hey, SO is still young.
dmckee
2008-10-11 20:06:37
A:
In the end, I went with MacPorts. It seems to have more momentum and more recently built packages.
Andrew Hedges
2008-10-21 07:57:46
A:
I've been using fink for over 5 years, through several transitional periods. I found it easy to use from the start, and now maintain several packages for it. Support on irc.freenode.net #fink is always at hand. (I last tried macports/darwinports over 4 years ago.) Fortunately, both communities are open and share porting information publicly.
fangism
2010-04-04 22:48:34
I'm thinking about trying brew. Just out of curiosity, why do you lik e brew?
TK
2010-05-29 11:49:18
The system is much better than MacPorts, the idea is that for example, Mac OS X comes with python installed. Brew will try to use the default python installation instead of trying to make it's own in /usr/opt/whatever ... so, homebrew premise, is to respect the Mac OS X installed packages and use them to it's favor + respecting the Mac OS X structure ( don't re create a whole new structure like fink and mac ports )
Mr.Gando
2010-07-09 04:11:25