MacPorts or Fink?

I read the article by Dan Benjamin, and don't see how it applies. In fact, both fink and darwinports follow the advice in it, substituting /usr/local with /sw or /opt/local.

I read the article by Dan Benjamin, and don't see how it applies. In fact, both fink and darwinports follow the advice in it, substituting /usr/local with /sw or /opt/local. That said, I have both on my Intel desktop and g4 laptop, and haven't had a problem running both.

The only potential drawback is having different versions the same package, and running the wrong one since its first in your path. I generally install whatever I can using fink (simply because it was the fist one I installed), and using darwinports for packages fink doesn't have. Update: I've since switched to MacPorts (the new name for DarwinPorts).

There was no particular reason, other than I got a new computer and wanted to try the other one. I'm just as happy with it, and haven't felt the need to install fink as well.

4 There is one big problem with MacPorts, the CPU time needed to compile the packages will remind you of gentoo. – sorin Apr 18 at 20:38.

I find I usualy prefer whichever one I'm not using at the time.

13 +1 and true. Well done. – Matt S.

Oct 8 '09 at 17:31 4 This was true for me for a while; I would get pissed off at one, uninstall it, and install the other, until I got too pissed off at that one. I've finally settled on MacPorts, since it generally makes me happier these days. – Brian Campbell Dec 31 '09 at 17:47 Funny.

I've been pretty happy with the peaceful co-existence for them, but have been running into more problems with them both lately. Gave up on both for couchdb... – iJames Sep 24 at 15:43.

Homebrew is also worth a look. It's more hands-on than Fink or MacPorts, but I think that's a good thing. You basically clone the git repo to /usr/local, then do "brew sqlite" or whatever.

The best part is, if a recipe doesn't work, you can fix it yourself and contribute back the fix!

4 +1 for mentioning a good alternative – csl Jun 11 '10 at 14:13 1 Homebrew is the way to go now. I wouldn't use MacPorts unless I couldnt make the formula I wanted for Homebrew. – Paul Robinson Nov 21 '10 at 17:51 2 You can fix MacPorts Portfiles in the same way, for example using 'port edit sqlite3' or using local ports trees.

Also you need git before you even can install it... – Raim Dec 23 '10 at 14:36 +1 Homebrew is the great underdog. – Ben Feb 17 at 3:10 2 @Raim: The magical unicorns at GitHub deliver a tarball containing a Homebrew snapshot straight to your computer. Having git installed is not required.

– Sharpie Feb 24 at 3:10.

I've used both Fink and macports I used Fink for a few years from 2002-2005, back then it then there was no macPorts (it was called Darwin ports). The main reason I used Fink was because it provided binary distribution. This was a must on G3 with 512Mb Fastforward 2008.

I got an intel based mac. Fink had only outdated binary distributions for my platform. So I moved to macports, since I'm going to be compiling everything from source anyway.

I've found some difficulties installing some ports from Macports with a fresh install (mainly due to playing around with variants or conflicts with libraries installed by apple). Otherwise it has been fine and the community is responsive. I haven't tried fink since but it seems that many of the ports in the stable tree are outdated.

However, there is no reason not to install both on your system. The only problems that may arrise are Duplicate installations of the same libraries Related to 1, but you might get conflicts between libraries installed by either method depending on which one the conf script finds first. However it is the same problem with apple provided libraries.

Some may also consider Rudix as a valid alternative. It ships with less packages than Fink/MacPorts but it also gets the job done. Quoting from its homepage: Rudix install software as packages under the traditional /usr/local/ file system in non-intrusive fashion and it never replaces core components of Mac OS X.

Every package is self-contained and has everything it needs to work. Rudix tries its best not to add extra dependecies to anything but the native Mac OS X dynamic libraries. Whenever the packages require external dependencies, this is solved at compile time using static linkage.

For the end user this translates as: install and play. Give it a spin and let me know what do you think! :-).

My impression is that Fink is more comprehensive, but MacPorts is more up-to-date. Installing both side-by-side will result in a lot of duplicated packages, but I'm not sure it will cause any real problems.

No problems so far. I run both of them side-by-side. – ayaz Dec 25 '08 at 7:08.

My fairly brief experience with DarwinPorts was not very satisfying. Switching to Fink made the old Debian user in me feel right and home, and for the (mostly scientific) tools I use the most I have found it to be very up-to-date. Of course, I use source archive to get bleeding-edge updates.

Sometime I get package build bugs, too. C'est la vie.

Macports. I've used both, and Macports is better. More up to date, less of a pain.

I switched to Linux a couple of years ago, though, so it's possible Fink has got a lot better since I left.

I tried Fink and got frustrated with it, though I've long since forgotten the details of why. I switched to MacPorts back when it was still DarwinPorts, and now I'm getting frustrated with it instead. I find about half my development toolchain needs to be tweaked or rebuilt by hand after I've tried installing tools with MacPorts.

I use Darcs for revision control, which requires GHC to build. I install both through MacPorts and discover that MacPorts is typically lagging weeks to months behind the current version of Darcs, so I end up using the stock Darcs to download current code and rebuild from scratch. I've had such misadventures with selecting a toolchain for Python 2.5, PostgreSQL, psycopg, and SQLAlchemy that I'd rather go hide in a corner than think about it again.In short, you might as well pick either Fink or MacPorts at random and then expect to spend a significant amount of time fixing or augmenting it.

I use MacPorts. I've not used Fink much, so I can't give much of a comparison; we use Fink at work to maintain Unix-y software on our Macs, but that's it. I used to just compile stuff by hand into /usr/local, but since I began using MacPorts, I haven't looked back.

I do know that the Tcl scripts that are used by MacPorts are simple enough to write that I've written my own and helped to add a few new pieces of software to the MacPorts repo, so that's definitely a plus. (Maybe this is just as easy to do with Fink -- I wouldn't know. ) I've also noticed that software gets updated pretty quickly in MacPorts -- for example, recently, new versions of GHC and Mercurial were available almost as soon as they were released.

This is also a plus.

I actually download and compile any new tools to /usr/local/ instead of using fink or darwinports. Dan Benjamin has a great article on why.

I have used both, although infrequently. I have not encountered a problem in using them side-by-side, although I can't recall a case where I was installing tools or dependencies between the two repositories.

Just a warning about Fink if you are behind a network proxy. The index is updated by either rsync or cvs. If neither can be proxied by your server, you can't update your local package list... Didn't realise there was an alternative though, will try MacPorts.

MacPorts also uses rsync for syncing, but it also supports alternatives over HTTP, see trac.macports. Org/wiki/howto/SyncingWithSVN and trac.macports. Org/wiki/howto/PortTreeTarball – Raim Feb 17 '09 at 19:09.

I recommend using homebrew instead - https://github. Com/mxcl/homebrew - which is really easy to use, and also has a large # of current recipes and an active community behind contributing these. And as it's git, you can fork & update or contribute your own recipes just as easily if you want.

Chronologically, Fink was great in the beginning, and I had given up on macports. Then I tried to install rabbitmq, and due to dependencies, fink couldn't handle it. Fortunately, macports could, and I could continue, because Fink and MacPorts can live together.

Now, though, neighter Fink nor Macports are installing CouchDB, so I've been trying to do homebrew. But due to mp & f, brew is not working. So sayeth "brew doctor".

So I'm facing a problem of perhaps needing to blow away /sw and /opt/local. But I'm very concerned with the doctor also complaining about a whole ton of packages in /usr/local saying that they are "unbrewed". So I'm starting to think that unless somebody can provide a really good explanation of why homebrew is not too invasive, it might not be the time to be using a package manager on the mac but rather learn the best way to install something and do it manually.

This is a little subjective, but I prefer MacPorts. I've setup MacPorts to run from the trunk for the latest portfile releases. I had previously used fink, but the packages always seemed to be out of date.

Since I first tried Fink a few years ago, and it locked up during the download, and refused to ever download anything else no matter what I did; I gave up on it. A couple years later, MacPorts came out, and just for kicks, I tried Fink again, and it hung at the same spot again. So I stuck with MacPorts.

I just installed MacPorts 1.7 for Tiger and after doing a sudo port -d selfupdate, it installed 1.8.2 and it appears to be working fine. My Tiger version is 10.4.11 with X11 and Xcode from the Tiger install DVD (i.e. Not downloaded from the Apple Developer Connection site) that came with my Core Duo (the "Early 2006" model).

I've successfully installed tiff and ghostscript with it.

Another alternative would be Gentoo Prefix. Since it's based on an actual popular linux distribution, it's package management is more actively maintained. Because it's Gentoo, it's more likely to have up to date versions of packages you want.

MacPorts is actively maintained. I get updates on an almost daily basis. Prefix may have other benefits (I've never looked into it), but I don't think this is one of them.

– KeithB Aug 19 '10 at 19:51.

I used both of them, but got stuck on the NetBSD packages collection pkgsrc since some years now. It is a very portable and stable *nix packages collection. You have to compile things yourself, but nearly everything is available and the quarterly releases are working.

Pkgsrc is available from netbsd.org/docs/software/packages.html and you will find information about the installation under OS X here. Pkgsrc is case sensitive in some parts, so you need a case sensitive file system to be on the save side. I use a separate HFSX image for pkgsrc and link the /pkg to /usr/pkg/ .

You can omit the HFSX partition and it might work in most cases, but I would not recommend that.

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