On Mon, 19 Apr 2021 13:25 -0400, Craig Treleaven wrote:
People don’t install MacPorts or Homebrew just to have a package
manager—they install a package manager as a prerequisite to get
software that they want. So getting popular software packages to
mention that MacPorts can install that software is very important.
Also, why should we consider that MacPorts is in competition with
Homebrew? Both MacPorts and Homebrew seem to have a sufficient number
of contributors to keep going for the foreseeable future. Nether
packaging system has to “win” nor does the other have to "lose”. The
projects do have differing philosophies that may make one more suitable
than the other for particular users. For example, Homebrew only aims
to support recent hardware and up-to-date operating system versions
even if users are sometimes left behind. MacPorts makes far greater
efforts to ensure packages work on older hardware and OS versions. We
might do a better job of explaining how MacPorts differs so that users
can make an informed choice.
My $0.02 (and Canada doesn’t even have pennies anymore!).
Craig
I echo this sentiment 100% and I'm glad you said this. My first thought
reading through this thread was, "Who cares how popular MacPorts is
compared to Homebrew?" So long as its users and contributors and
maintainers are happy, and so long as there are enough people around to
do the routine maintenance of adding/updating ports (and approving and
merging those changes) and fixing bugs, then I don't think it's
important to concern ourselves with how popular MacPorts is or is not.
And right now it seems that we certainly have enough users,
contributors, and maintainers to keep MacPorts healthy and humming
along.
I don't think new users are a *bad* thing, but it's important to keep in
mind that popularity brings with it downsides too. I think this is a
classic case of "be careful what you wish for".
Enumerating the ways in which MacPorts differs from Homebrew would
certainly be useful and I think is a good idea, but I think the value in
this comes simply from addressing any misinformation or out-of-date
ideas about MacPorts rather than a dedicated PR campaign.
Greg
