DarwinPorts

[sparkleytone]

This is the project that Jordan Hubbard and the OpenDarwin.org team have been working on. The PortManager is finally approachable and in my opinion it has eclipsed Fink in usability. It is nearly in release form and for us *nix geeks it is a pretty exciting project.

http://www.opendarwin.org/projects/darwinports/

For those that want to make it easy I have -> precompiled <- the app and framework for ya.

I mean DAMN I can even get it to make packages for me. YUM.

 

[alset]

Thanks for the tip! The screenshots look inviting. I guess I know what I'll be doing with the rest of my weekend...

Dan

 

[mstecker]

Well, I consider myself a *nix geek, and I don't get these projects at all.

How is this better than:

tar -xvf
make
make install

I can understand if your target audience is non-technical, but when I install something, I like to see what it is and where it's going, and from looking at the web site about this it seems like the target audience IS technical.

And finally, if the official code heirarchy for some project doesn't work correctly as-is on Darwin/OSX, why not take the time to contribute fixes back to the source rather than hack up a package suited for our OS?

 

[hariya]

Originally posted by mstecker
Well, I consider myself a *nix geek, and I don't get these projects at all.

How is this better than:

tar -xvf
make
make install

There is a huge difference between these software (fink, darwinports) and software install. Similar software called portage is responsible for the popularity of a linux from scratch system called Gentoo. Also, look at the ports system on the *BSDs.

The reason these are better is that if all you are going to do is download the software, untar and install it without very specific customizations, you might as well let the machine do it for you. The process is automated, you dont have to download each dependency individually, the machine could even apply some customizations automatically.

The key thing here is that you install from source, not from a package from an unknown person. It does not matter if you download and install each package and its dependency yourself individually in sequence or let the package do it for you.

 

[sparkleytone]

Originally posted by mstecker
Well, I consider myself a *nix geek, and I don't get these projects at all.

How is this better than:

tar -xvf
make
make install

one reason is deployment. the fact that one can tell DarwinPorts to prepare a .pkg file for easy installation is a giant leap forward in OS X binary distribution. I know that personally, now when I am telling a friend about a cool command line tool, I can just give them a .pkg file and make the install painless.

 

[maradong]

well, that really looks cool .... nothin' more to say

 

[elusion]

DarwinPorts looks neat. I'll be ditching fink once they get the Perl DBI module.

 

[benguru]

Unix

I would like to use this but do i need anything else or just what is there for each one? I mean do i need X11 or whatever it is called?

 

[dxp4acu]

Sounds cool. I will probably get into it once X11 comes with OS X (Panther I hope!)
That would rock!