On 1/26/21 10:12 AM, Christopher Nielsen wrote: >> /Ken Cunningham wrote: >> / >> homebrew is in shambles. >> >> their long-touted "no-sudo" and "no PATH" advantage from installing >> into /usr/local has been eliminated by Apple as the horrible security >> threat it always was. They have to retool into /opt/homebrew and make >> 10,000 builds respect the build args now. >> >> They stripped out all their universal handling code a few years ago, >> can't put it back, and so can't do the critical universal builds any >> more. They tell everyone universal is wasteful, lipo things manually, >> and run the x86_64 homebrew on Apple Silicon. >> >> So MacPorts, which works great from 10.4 PPC to 11.x arm64, is the >> place to be. > > Personnally, I’ve never actually tried HomeBrew, as I didn’t want > anything installed into core OS areas. And after choosing MacPorts > years ago - 10+ at this point? - I’ve always been very happy with the > experience. Enough so that I’m finally giving back, as a contributor! > > One advantage that HomeBrew does have, though, is cachet: There are so > many times when articles - or even organizations, such as Google - > simply recommend using HomeBrew… with no mention of MacPorts. > > So, my feeling is that we need to up our public relations game. Do we > have an active social media presence, for example? (Twitter in > particular?) > > Of note, while I’m not an expert in social media relations, I’d > happily volunteer to help with it. > > Thoughts?
Hi! Long-time user of both Homebrew and MacPorts here; former Homebrew maintainer. It's definitely a PR issue; Homebrew is winning on that front. IMHO, the other thing is that Homebrew is /fun/ to use and accessible to less-technical users. Friendlier command output, low-jargon documentation, sense of humor, fun emojis. MacPorts feels like more of a "pro" thing and serious sysadmin tool, and its command output can be kind of technical and intimidating. I think the Homebrew approach is attractive to a lot of general Mac users, especially those approaching a package manager for the first time. Another big thing is that Homebrew ships binaries for everything, so you can do a full Homebrew install of a big toolchain in just a few minutes, where it might take hours to compile. MacPorts still builds everything from source, right? Those are the reasons I always recommend Homebrew to new Mac package manager users, even though I think both are good tools. Cheers, Andrew
