On 31 Aug 2017, at 17:53, Ken Cunningham <ken.cunningham.web...@gmail.com> wrote: > I think homebrew gets attention for two reasons. > > > 1. a one-line copy & paste install command that is pasted into the terminal > (macports could / should do that too, BTW). > > 2. the fact that it symlinks it's stuff into /usr/local, making it easier to > use it's installed products for building other software for amateurs > (macports could do that too). > > 3. My impression is that it's not so difficult to get things accepted. If a > submission builds on Travis on 10.10 to 10.12, it's usually in homebrew > within a day or so, it seems. > > On the other hand: > > 1. MacPorts, in general, pays more attention to the details. There is > significantly more OCD in the submission reviews, which is both very good and > sometimes deflating. But a port in macports is very trustworthy, and in the > end, that is the single most important thing. > > 2. MacPorts has a couple of real superstars who can fix things it seems > nobody else can fix. So we have gcc6 working perfectly well all the way back > to Tiger, for example, and the latest-greatest clang / llvm features, etc.
The first three points are certainly not what appeals to me from homebrew. I do agree on the latter two though. To give you a couple of examples: vagrant — there's a ticket but the dev seems to haven't finished it, and ipfs — I wrote the port and the ticket's now in the twilight zone, no feedback whatsoever (I have other portfiles that I don't even bother submitting). Both are in homebrew. And as I mentioned earlier, cask has already 3.7K binaries to manage, which is quite convenient. I don't want to get rid of MacPorts, but complement it without breaking anything.
