With the huge popularity of Macs in recent years and the reputation for stability that OS X has garnered, how in the world has it happened that no one has ever written a comprehensive package manager for OSX? When you consider that in all intents and purposes, it's still a unix variant, I find it almost shocking that no one has even ported a linux package manager to work with OS X. How great would it be to have apt-get for mac? That would be a dream; synaptic or one of the many other GUI managers would be a huge welcome to an already fine OS. I just find it really strange that no one has already done this.
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Package Management
- Thread starter drumvoodoo
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Why when we have Mac App store.
apt-get is good to download specific components and apps for Linux, but it pales in comparison to the app store. Even Ubuntu was trying to move away from apt-get.
Also isn't apt-get a linux feature, I don't know if there's something similar with unix.
What does apt-get give you, that you cannot do with the Mac app store?
apt-get is good to download specific components and apps for Linux, but it pales in comparison to the app store. Even Ubuntu was trying to move away from apt-get.
Also isn't apt-get a linux feature, I don't know if there's something similar with unix.
What does apt-get give you, that you cannot do with the Mac app store?
Well, I wasn't simply thinking in terms of installation. I was thinking in terms of uninstalling things COMPLETELY and comprehensively in a manner that is easy for for someone unfamiliar with the OS to grasp. A manager will show you everything you have installed and not just the apps you purchased from APPLE. There re several things that a good package manager can do.
As a side note, I'm not sure which app store you've been using but the one that I connect to with my MBP is the biggest pos I have ever seen with regards to package administration. When you can search for an application with the EXACT, CASE SENSITIVE NAME of an application and still not get it in the results, something is seriously broken "in the cloud"
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Not really the same thing. I've used macports but I am mostly referring to something that is graphic and covers all of the software for your machine.
Apple isn't about to allow a person to mess with the underpinnings of OS X. True you can interact with the Unix side of things, but they're not going to give you tools to add/remove alter anything of OSX outside of the installation and MAS allows you to do.
Agreed, and I'm not really even implying they should. They could approach things from the same manner they do with IOS. The manager could only install/uninstall the packages beyond the initial base installation. They could sandbox everything that comes with OSX.
I think that flies in the face of good system management. The rules* that I learned started something like this:
Rule number 1: Never change anything that the vendor gives you.
Rule number 2: Keep your stuff separate from the vendor's.
Rule number 3: Don't expect it to work.
A.
*thanks, Melinda