Since now we're starting to have stats collected, it might be maybe worth it to provide binaries instead of standard variants, more for the most requested ones?
On Sun, 4 Apr 2021, 04:07 Joshua Root, <[email protected]> wrote: > On 2021-4-4 11:35 , Craig Treleaven wrote: > >> On Apr 3, 2021, at 8:21 PM, [email protected] > >> <mailto:[email protected]> <[email protected] > >> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > >> > >> I see this misconception /all over the place/, that Homebrew is fast > >> because it uses prebuilt binaries, whereas MacPorts makes you wait > >> while software is compiled. It can't /just/ be due to outdated > >> information, if we're more than a decade out from when the buildbot > >> went live. > >> > >> I know it's just one data point, but I thought the replies I got on > >> this Hacker News comment today were interesting. I can understand why > >> he/she got confused, and I wonder if there's anything MacPorts could > >> do to make it clearer. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26678498 > >> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26678498> > > > > It happens that I just did a self update and upgraded 20 ports on 10.15. > > 6 or the 20 were built from source. I believe this is higher than > > usual due to the backlog on the 10.15 builbot. Even in the best case, > > however, a fair number of ports will be built from source for the > > well-known reasons. It would be interesting to know, say, how many of > > our most-requested ports are always built from source. > > > > > https://ports.macports.org/statistics/ports/?days=30&first=-req_count&second=-total_count&third=port > > < > https://ports.macports.org/statistics/ports/?days=30&first=-req_count&second=-total_count&third=port > > > > > > Eg, git is our second-most requested port and it is always built from > > source AFAIK. > > > > Almost any reasonably complex package will have some of its dependencies > > that must be built from source. > > > > To the average user, I would suggest that we should emphasize that > > MacPorts installs binaries whenever allowed by licensing but makes a > > serious effort to avoid contravening the various open source licenses. > > Plus MacPorts offers many more options (“variants”) to customize > > installations and offers a wide breadth of packages. > > I wrote a new FAQ and slightly reworded the one about universal > binaries. The latter was originally written before the buildbot existed, > so it was saying "build" where "install" is now more accurate. However > +universal is still a non-default variant and so very often won't be > available as a binary. > > - Josh >
