+ Randolph Fritz <[email protected]>: > On 2009-10-15, Wendy Bossons <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > Can someone explain the purpose of Macports and why I might need it? > > > > Broadly, because it's an easy-to-use library of useful free > software. It provides, especially, dependency tracking, which means > that when you install a package you want, you get the packages that > that that package depends on automatically, without fuss.
I beg to differ. Over the years I have used macports I have certainly seen my share of fuss. Enough so that I have started being careful taking a backup of /opt before doing an update, so I can roll back to an earlier version if needed. (I haven't needed to yet, but I have come close to doing it a couple times.) If you had said a minimum of fuss, I would agree. It's almost impossible to avoid problems in a system that is dragging in source code from all over the intertubes the way macports does, and I must say I am impressed and pleased that I don't see more problems than I do. But let's not oversell it. "No fuss"? No way. > The value of the tool depends, of course, on what you are doing, but > Macports has helped me greatly in my software development work. Amen to that. I don't do software development myself, but I know enough about programming that I can generally work my way around most problems that arise. The typical Mac user, whose idea of software installation involves dragging a .app to /Applications or double clicking a .mpkg, will however soon be out of their depths when a port command fails. And that will happen, if they use many ports and upgrade regularly. - Harald _______________________________________________ macports-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/macports-users
