On Aug 10, 2007, at 14:54, Anders F Björklund wrote:
Ognen Ivanovski wrote:
I was just wondering if it's possible to use MacPorts as an inhouse package distribution manager for several platforms (linux, solaris, mac os x).
MacPorts only supports Mac OS X, so that's not going to work cross- platform. (you can use it on FreeBSD with GNUstep, but it is not officially supported)
Well, to express that in a bit more friendly way: MacPorts is designed for Mac OS X 10.3 and later. The target audience is Mac OS X users. But since Mac OS X is based on BSD UNIX, many ports will also work on BSD-style operating systems. MacPorts should also be capable of supporting builds on most UNIX- like platforms, including Linux and Solaris. Many ports will probably already work on those operating systems without modification. I doubt anybody is testing most of the ports on those systems, however, so you may run into problems. But those problems should be surmountable (Mac OS X GUI applications excepted for obvious reasons). You can insert directives into the portfiles for commands to be run only on certain platforms. And if you find such changes necessary, you can submit patches to us via Trac for inclusion in the normal ports collection, so that you don't have to keep maintaining your own deltas. Looking through the existing portfiles, I see gettext which declares it will work on linux, libpng says it will work on linux, freebsd and sunos, and monit claims to work on linux, freebsd, netbsd, openbsd and solaris. In addition to Mac OS X, of course. And, as I say, many ports will probably work on your other OSes, even if they don't declare it. (And if you find that they do work, you can tell us so that we can indicate that the port does work on that platform.)