On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 03:29, Anders F Björklund <[email protected]> wrote: > > Pity, though. There's nothing *that* special between > all the various package managers and their file formats > and their dependencies, except that they're "different" ?
It's not so much that they're different, but that they track and manage what has been installed and can break if a resource is used that shouldn't be available (from the perspective of the package manager). There's also the philosophical differences: MacPorts and Fink install packages that are already available from the OS because the resource is then not subject to breakage when the OS changes; Fink uses stable and unstable trees; Homebrew uses system resources, installs to an "overloaded" prefix, and suggests that this location be made writeable by unauthenticated users. > Not that Macports or Homebrew manage packages, but anyway. How so? Aside from compiling the software on the client machine, they do everything else that comes to mind for the definition of a package manager. Many *nix package managers also allow compiling from source when a binary isn't available. And, MacPorts does offer some precompiled binary packages. -- arno s hautala /-| [email protected] pgp b2c9d448 _______________________________________________ macports-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/macports-dev
