Mac Packaging: proposal for a new method(suggestions please)

Question

Macports is the only packaging system I have checked out on the Mac and I dont like it.(it needs all its applications installed in a particular location. Thats probably the reason why it showed Python2.5 as a dependency which needs to be installed even though I already had it.) For a person who has moved over from Ubuntu, I sorely miss apt-get. As far as Macports are concerned, there is no central repository so the source of a package is fetched from the project website, built and installed.

Now, Ubuntu has various open source projects in a deb format which can be properly installed on ubuntu machines. Whats more, there is also a central repo for all these debs.

Problems with Macports:-

1. It installs stuff even if its already present on the machine.
2. It always downloads, compiles and installs packages from the project website. It does not have a central repository for all packages. I guess this could result in installing packages which are not mutually compatible.

Now assuming that Mac had a really good packaging system what would be the problems we face?

1. Servers for all the packages.
2. All the packages would have to be regularly maintained, newer packages would have to be packaged.

However, if there were some standard way to convert deb files(I'm talking about deb files because I feel Ubuntu repositories are the best) to packages which are installable in OSX :-

1. We could use the standard Ubuntu repositories which have packages that are regularly maintained.

2. We have a central location for all the packages rather than downloading packages from the development website(like Macports does).

Would something like that be possible? If anyone has ideas for a better solution, do pitch in your comments. Its really sad that there is'nt a really good package manager for Macs.

Answer 1

I have friends who use homebrew for Mac package management, and they love it. I've never used it myself, though.

Unfortunately, it looks like it still relies on grabbing sources from project pages, but apparently it's better than MacPorts.

Answer 2

i dont know how you can say there isnt a good pkg manager. Fink is essentially apt-get (from Linux) while macports is essentially ports (from BSD). Youre not going to find a package manager that avoids your two key criticisms because nothing is going to overwrite the system libraries installed. Its bad practice because these pacakges could be potentially overwritten by any system update from Apple since they dont use a pkg manager system wide and there is no way to rectify any special requirements OS X needs from the software as opposed to what you need in your development installation.