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Comment by deergomoo | Hacker News Reader

> Brew is good, but Linux package managers like pacman and apt are so much better

I used starting fresh on the M1 as an excuse to give MacPorts a go, and I like it much better than Homebrew. There's some smaller packages that aren't on MP, but all the big stuff is there and to me it feels much more like a Linux package manager.

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I’ve always preferred MacPorts to brew. I think you’ve nailed it, it just feels much more like the Linux package managers I’m used to. Homebrew has definitely won the popularity contest though.

I used MacPorts ages ago, and honestly thought it went away, which is why I switched to Brew, which I've never gotten comfortable with.

IIRC my issue with MacPorts was that it insisted on recompiling the world from its ecosystem as dependencies because it kept everything super-stable, whereas brew would attempt to use system ones if they were viable. It was more or less FreeBSD Ports vs. Debian apt-get as the model at that point, and MacPorts was (predictably) FreeBSD-like.

Over time I'm not sure brew is any better now, though. I have unlinked versions of gcc, python, etc., etc. under /usr/local that are there just to handle brew packages that listed them as pinned dependencies. It's nice that brew doesn't expose them to CLI unless I want it to do so, but it's not less complex.

Assuming MacPorts has a good "bottle" type concept of precompiled packages now too (haven't looked for years) it's probably about the same as brew now, just more stable. If they still compile from source every time a la BSD, that would be my main sticking point.

MacPorts has binary packages for most things these days.

Could you expand on what is better about macoorts over brew? I quickly got onto the Macports page and saw first off that sudo is needed for updating itself and second that I have to select the right version for my OS: Brew is a single install that does not require sudo to update so there’s a few things that already make Brew more appealing for me. What does MacPorts do better?

This is the article that prompted me to give it a try, and summarises my feelings better than I could:

https://saagarjha.com/blog/2019/04/26/thoughts-on-macos-pack...

Also, the manual of macport is beautiful, as well as the port file.

I'd like to be done with Homebrew. (I asked you to install pv, not thrash the world.)

Anyone tried Nix? I'm trying it soon. If it doesn't stick, yep, back to MacPorts like it's 2007.

I switched to Nix a few years ago and have had no regrets.

Yes, Nix is totally viable. Steep learning curve, but many benefits.

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