I like the way Fink [1] uses the /sw (software) directory.
Does anyone have a valuable opinion on the comparison between Fink and Homebrew — or maybe MacPorts?
* A large number of pre-built binary packages with an apt-get style command (pkgin) to install them. Over 10,000 packages are available for OSX in the most recent release (2014Q1).
* It is cross-platform to over 20 different platforms. At Joyent we provide binary packages for SmartOS/illumos, OSX, and Linux, so you can use identical packaging tools across multiple platforms, rather than having to use different tools on each OS. It is the default package manager on SmartOS, with over 12,000 binary packages available for that platform.
* As the 'src' in 'pkgsrc' implies, it's very easy to build from source too if you want to tweak build options or compiler flags. You can also install into any prefix you desire (we default to /usr/pkg), even as an unprivileged user to your home directory.
Our binary packages are available from http://pkgsrc.joyent.com/installing.html and we'd love to hear feedback on how to improve them or adding support for different platforms.
I ended up making a /rr tree ("rwg's root"), building things I care about from scratch, and using GNU stow to manage it.
That was an early blocker for me as well; however, when I discovered that I could just install homebrew at ~/.homebrew, that made it all work out.
I created https://github.com/wilmoore/homebrew-home to automate this; however, you technically don't need this install script as you could do it yourself if you really wanted to. I like it because I no longer have to think about it.
That said, you can configure homebrew to use any path (check the wiki), you just have to set other environment variables as needed (eg, PATH). For example I'm currently using /opt/homebrew.
(note: a large downside to this is that you have to compile everything and cannot take advantage of Homebrew's pre-compiled "bottles" for some packages)
Homebrew is, by far, the most pleasant package manager I have ever used.
I couldn't even tell you why, but it's just nicely designed, and shit just tends to work. Part of it is that it targets a very well-defined system (MacOS), and it has an explicit aim to integrate with that system as well as possible. (I guess this could be true of e.g. apt on ubuntu, but ha ha ha.)
As an example, most package managers have some funky, one-off , more-or-less shitty way to update the packages list. Homebrew has...git! Which works great.
I highly recommend checking it out.
Another example: Most package managers say, "you're installing random software off the internet? Better give it root access!" Homebrew installs as the current user, no root access. Much saner default policy, IMO.
Or maybe you want to see a list of installed packages? "brew list". Oh, you wanted one-per-line, that's "brew list -1", just like ls.
Or maybe you want to install some software from a 3rd party repo? "brew tap $somewhere; brew install $something".
It's just a very thoughtful, well-made piece of software. Strongly recommend checking it out.