![]() ![]() While it's true that Homebrew uses contentional Unix installation directories, it does not install things willy-nilly into /usr/local/bin or /usr/local/lib. Even with MacPorts, it was one of those things that you start and then either open another terminal window, flip to a browser, or go get yourself a cup of joe. No no no.Īnd, to be honest, TeX is a monster no matter how you install it. But none of them overwrite the extant system files. Homebrew is exactly the same in this regard as Fink and MacPorts, as I understand it: all three are setting up separate installations. Having two versions of something like Python might have once upon a time seemed like a foolish luxury, but even on my two year old MacBook Air, I think it's worth the extra baggage. I would argue that you have things reversed: package managers allow you to install your own working version of Python so if can mess with it and now worry about messing with anything the system itself might depend upon. Homebrew upgrades are less likely to rebuild python and X.org, which is a mercy. Homebrew, on the other hand, is a fair bit lighter, trusting a rather more sane OS X these days. ![]() There are differences in style (debian dpkg versus bsd ports), and MacPorts has had the advantage of apple employees working on it. As a consequence they've tended to be fairly comprehensive stacks, often duplicating system provided software which have been a source of issues. several common libraries were installed as frameworks). Fink and (a little later) MacPorts date from a time when OS X was a pretty eccentric unix (e.g. My notes on working with MacPorts are here.Īll these projects solve the same problem: provide package management on a third party OS. I am willing to bet that there are cases where Homebrew or Fink are better than MacPorts. Fortunately, a wiser person than me pointed me (back) to MacPorts.Īll that noted, like many things, it all depends on what software / functionality you are trying to manage with one of the three. I generally prefer Homebrew, but I have found that in my particular case, working with Python, MacPorts excels at making everything "just work." I fought and fought to get SciPy and Numpy and the NLTK up and running on my Mac using Homebrew, but it just wasn't happening. One of the greatest strengths of such systems is that they can often manage various dependencies for you, and essentially say to you, "Hey, you are about to install X, did you know you will need Y to make that work? You wanna install that too?" I'm guessing from your question you already have a general sense of a package management system. ![]()
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