How to do "sudo apt-get install " on OSX?
+3
A:
There isn't an equivalent out of the box.
You may want to take a look at MacPorts:
MacPorts, formerly called DarwinPorts, is a package management system that simplifies the installation of software on the Mac OS X and Darwin operating systems. It is a free/open source software project to simplify installation of other free/open source software. Similar in aim and function to Fink and the BSDs' ports collections, DarwinPorts was started in 2002 as part of the OpenDarwin project, with the involvement of a number of Apple Inc. employees including Landon Fuller, Kevin Van Vechten, and Jordan Hubbard.
fletcher
2010-08-24 07:27:35
Yes, that's the console equivalent of application installation, but most people here were under the impression that the original poster wanted a package management.
chiborg
2010-08-24 07:32:14
+1
A:
If you really want an apt-based package management, take a look at Fink. It's the "oldest" package manager on Mac OS X and I'm not sure if the packages are properly maintained anymore. But I'm using it successfully under Snow Leopard.
chiborg
2010-08-24 07:30:53
Maintenance levels vary. For the kind of computing I do, Fink is much more up to date and well maintained than MacPorts.
dmckee
2010-08-24 17:33:56
+2
A:
Others have mentioned MacPorts and Homebrew; it might be worth noting the difference between them.
MacPorts works for me, happily enough. But it has the very annoying feature that it wants to install everything. Thus on several occasions, I've had to drag it back from trying to install its own version of Perl, ignoring the system one, or TeX, and even gcc. Now, the reason for this is, I imagine, that if it were to rely on the system versions of these (or any preinstalled one in the case of TeX), there might be some version-skew issue that would cause something to break. And disk space is cheap. That's probably true, sort of, but it still seems a bit obsessive (and I'm not sure I want to use anything that's quite so dependent on specific versions). Sensible or not, it sets my teeth on edge every time it happens.
Homebrew, in contrast, specifically aims not to duplicate tools that are already installed. When MacPorts does its install-the-world thing, I usually end up killing it and installing the package with the mad dependencies by hand, so I've never quite been driven to the point of using Homebrew, but I've been on the point of doing so, ever since I first heard about it.
Norman Gray
2010-08-24 12:45:26
Usually - but yes, not always - one can avoid the MacPorts install-the-world thing by checking the port file (easy to do from the Macports website) for each package to be installed and its recursive dependencies and choosing any appropriate variants; often there are gccxx variants, etc. Granted, still a bit of a PITA but once you know what the variants are, you can usually set them as defaults in `/opt/local/etc/macports/variants.conf`
Ned Deily
2010-08-25 08:00:28
@Ned Deily: That's a useful bit of information -- thanks! I'll be sure to check that next time I have to use MacPorts.
Norman Gray
2010-08-25 13:20:18