Its why does this have to be a thing now? Did anyone want this? Honestly, I have not heard anyone asking for it before or after it was released. If it's ambiguous, then why is this at top of HN?
I downvoted your comment. I think this article is spot on for HN, and I think you showed a lack of critical self-awareness questioning its relevance.
But the truth is that XCode built software is far more important to Mac users and that’s where Apples focus was. Homebrew users are less than 1% of their installed base.
The other truth is the M1 hadn’t been important to Homebrew maintainers. At least not yet.
Cite: https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/3853#issuecomment-678249...
Apple had their own stuff to develop, including a new architecture, a new OS version for 2 architectures, ports of all their apps, and several other stuff besides, including the UNIX userland they ship.
The idea that a company should be responsible for all third party FOSS stuff on its platform, used by a small minority of users, is a little strange...
That said, a MacPorts guy below says that "Apple engineers had patches for basic support ready fairly quickly".
Not to mention:
https://twitter.com/wongmjane/status/1275177255681982464?s=2...
That would be me, who is not really a MacPorts guy…
> https://twitter.com/wongmjane/status/1275177255681982464
…and this is the link I replied to ;)
I'm not claiming they should have done anything. I was actually pleasantly surprised when they said they would. I'm just saying that they didn't show up with all the fixes as some may have believed from what Apple said during WWDC.
Lol, missed that. Rarely pay attention to who I'm responding to, just what they wrote :-)
I never bothered with these alternative eco-systems.
Other's don't.
As if some self-imposed UNIX/POSIX austerity, making do with the basic (and old) UNIX userland that comes with macOS (or other platforms), is something to be lauded?
(As opposed to just an example of someone making do with the little they need, where others' mileage may vary?)
Or is needing some of the tons of programs that don't come with "Apple platforms and their UNIX" (e.g. some random stuff I use: gnuplot, ripgrep, redis, postgres, jq, graphviz, and tons of different things others might want) somehow problematic?
Not even sure where Apple platforms and UNIX come into play as something to be contrasted to "replacements for GNU/Linux".
One of the benefits of macOS is precisely that as a UNIX it can run all kinds of UNIX tools, not just the basic POSIX utils, but close to everything available in a Linux/FreeBSD/etc package manager...
OK, I get what you mean.
But "what it is" includes being a very usable Unix core that can run all kinds of stuff one might want.
So, like you, I don't expect macOS to be a GNU/Linux, or cater to tinkering and Linux/FOSS preferences. And I do my Linux-based development in Docker, remote VPS and servers, and so on.
But, on the other hand, I wouldn't carry two laptops, a "Linux" one for running postgres and redis and gnuplot, and a Mac one for running XCode and Instruments and Photoshop, out of some principle that Mac is Mac and Linux is Linux and "never the twain (use cases) shall meet".
But, to paraphrase Big Lebowski, "that's like, his preference, man".
This isn't really about alternative ecosystems, it's about complementary ecosystems. There are a lot of people that use MacOS desktops alongside Linux or other Unix machines. For these people having a common set of tools that work the same, so you can use the same command lines and scripts across multiple platforms, is incredibly useful.