Never really understood the appeal of brew. I tried it several times, ended up wasting a lot of time looking for the recipes. I might be using it incorrectly.
I do enjoy using MacPorts because I can quickly search the packages from their website.
Brew's got you covered, to find mysql for instance it's just
$ brew search mysql
That is weird; I like brew better than macports so far. It hasn't failed me, as long as you keep everything updated.
brew just seems like a less mature macports. most of the differentiating features have disappeared as brew gradually discovered the same problems that macports/fink had already learned over the past decade.