Macports On Pure Darwin

[Anders F Björklund]

Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:

>> The project doesn't seem to have decided yet whether it wants to  
>> provide the best possible Mac OS X experience, or whether it wants  
>> to e.g. provide its own bootstrap versions of all the required  
>> system libraries and binaries ?
>
> The two are not mutually exclusive.  MacPorts provides its own  
> bootstrap versions in order to better control the overall experience.

The current experience on Tiger is pretty decent, but the experience  
on Leopard is not so great (yet).

Not saying the two are exclusive, but a recurring question is why one  
should use the outdated and outfeatured versions provided by MacPorts  
instead of using the updated and customized ones available from the  
new System ? (some examples here being Python and Ruby) Of course  
this could also be fixed by updating the ports, at least for the  
+darwin_9 platform. But it does raise the question why it is trying  
so hard to not use the system libraries and binaries*, if only  
catering for the latest and greatest releases from Apple anyway ? So  
as long as those other platforms provide necessary requirements, I  
think they should be allowed still...

* as per the FAQ http://trac.macports.org/projects/macports/wiki/ 
FAQ#WhyisMacPortsusingitsownlibraries

--anders