On 30-May-07, at 12:40 , paul beard wrote:
On May 30, 2007, at 8:35 AM, Andre-John Mas wrote:
Given the target audience, and that these aren't pure unix solutions, I can't imagine how this would make their life easier. Different audiences, different solutions. I would be interested how you came to your conclusion.
Um, these are open source software packages that, while they can be packaged, can also be built from source. It seemed there was some overlap and an opportunity to build the mindshare associated with MacPorts by explaining that many of those applications are available in an integrated package management system.
I wasn't suggesting they were interchangeable, merely that MacPorts offered some of the same tools with a lot more useful stuff besides. The idea was to give people who might feel adventurous or who have experience with compiing ported applications a choice. Choice is good. And expanding MacPorts' base is better.
I'm getting a sense that people who use double-clickable installers are somehow not "our sort of people." Goodness knows we can always use more snobbery ;-)
No snobbery intended. For me it was more that people who are used to drag and drop installs aren't necessarily going to want to play around with the command-line - if someone comes up with a simple to use and elegant GUI that just works, then I might reconsider my remarks. Something else MacPorts would need to support is the ability to move the application. I doubt /opt/local would be the right place for the applications. Even if they were in /Applications it is not necessarily the final resting place, since some people like to group application types together, for example /Application/Movie Viewers/ Would there be a way for MacPorts to support file references, rather than just file paths, so it could keep track where the application have been moved to? I know MacOS X offers the ability, but is this something we might consider adding to MacPorts? Andre