> So it really does come down to portage after all. Portage has a hard > dependency on bash. portage is intimately wrapped up in the linux way of doing > things. >
Right, we have to say Bash. To be exact Bash is GNU not Linux. I genarally say Linux not Gnu-Linux. However in this case the difference matters. http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/ I run portage more or less sucessfully on Cygwins POSIX layer. Other people run it on Interix or Solaris. > As evidence: the only non-linux port that went anywhere was on FreeBSD, now > moribund for years. True. But FreeBSD isn't that popular like Windows, Mac or Linux. I think there is a future for second level managers that can be installed into multiple OS and yet set up the very same POSIX invironement. Having that you can build complex software that is portable. You don't depend on Java. You don't need to run a virtual server. Currently there are two canditates. One candidate is Cygwin Ports, the other one is Gentoo Prefix. Cygwin Ports just added cross-compilation features into the latest edition. Still Cygwin is limited to Windows. By this Cygwin Ports has done the first steps to become portable to Linux and Mac in future and it is already very mature on Windows. Gentoo Prefix is already able to run on Windows-Interix, Linux and Mac as second level manager, but it isn't that mature. Still it is not discovered by a bigger community. The potential is already there. So you finally can't say FreeBSD was the only port of Portage. But there is none that went to a major public. Al
