zlacker

MacPorts (né DarwinPorts) was created by Apple engineers long before the App Store existed. IMHO it’s superior to Homebrew in just about every way, existed long before Homebrew and targets the same audience (unlike the App Store which is targeting a very different population).

If you haven’t looked at MP lately, it’s worth reviewing.

>>jonhoh+(OP)
I’ve just switched from MP to HomeBrew. I’m interested in why do you think MP is superior?

>>jonhoh+(OP)
Used it in the days it required everything to run as root (Sudo). Then discovered homebrew and have never looked back. Every package I've looked at is better maintained on brew. Why do you think MP is superior?

>>aryono+2h
Installing packages for your system as a non-root user is fairly broken and Homebrew jumps through a number of questionable hoops to make this work.

>>jonhoh+(OP)
MacPorts still has a number of Apple engineers contributing to it, although it is no longer an Apple-sponsored project and I have no idea if they are doing so in any professional capacity.

Homebrew, interestingly, has been moving towards an App Store-esque “binary distribution platform” for a while now.

>>saagar+Lr
Binary distribution is not bad, it's heaps better than forcing everyone to recompile the very same software again and again on their own laptops. See also Nix.

>>saagar+sr
Like chown-ing /usr/local to what is supposed to be a non privileged user, reducing this security of everything in there. It’s like people don’t realize there’s a reason port (and apt and dnf and pretty much every package manager) requires “sudo” to install software. Homebrew has always felt poorly thought out to me and every time I try to use it again I come across some broken package that works fine in port.

>>wereHa+Yx
MacPorts does not force you to do that. Homebrew on the other hand pushes you strongly towards their precompiled binaries, and they have steadily removed customizability of what gets installed on your machine as a result because they don't want to shoulder the added complexity on their side (as they'd need to provide binaries for all the options…)

>>lysium+I3
It includes a lot of Unixy “deep cuts” that aren’t in homebrew, it doesn’t stretch an unrelated analogy into its own jargon (brew, cask, etc.), it easily allows variants of builds when the defaults won’t do, it stays sandboxed in its own namespace by default, etc.

The original problem the brew developers seemed to have with MacPorts (no binary distribution) is now resolved and MP retains all of the flexibility of a source-based package manager.

I also “like” sudoing package installation/removal of system packages. It’s no different from any other Unix package manager. If I’m the only user, I can chown /opt/local Or install to my home directory and run MP without sudo.