Side effects?

[James Linder]

On 01/02/2013, at 4:00 AM, macports-users-request at lists.macosforge.org wrote:

>> 
>> One time funding (pay for a task) is (arguably) different than routinely asking for money. We have had trolls in the past like that, simply feeding off people.
> 
> Well, I don't think I'm a troll...for a long time PortAuthority was the 
> only viable GUI tool for MacPorts. See this ancient blog entry calling 
> for a MacPorts GUI at GSoc:
> 
> http://ihack.us/2008/03/24/building-a-gui-for-macports/
> 
> Dr. Ernie called PA a "clever" product and the "state-of-the-art" at the 
> time.
> 
> GUI programming is hard. I think that's one reason why a free, 
> open-source GUI tool for MacPorts has never really taken off: I have 
> literally watched such tools come and go over the past eight or nine 
> years that I've been a MacPorts (formerly DarwinPorts) user.
> 
> One reason I'm still at it is PA provides a modest amount of income for 
> me. And if PA makes MacPorts more usable to some, and attracts more 
> users, then that's to MacPorts' benefit as well.
> 
> If a professional-level, full-featured, open-source GUI tool for 
> MacPorts came along, I'm sure the community would embrace it. I would 
> certainly welcome the competition. But finding someone devoted enough to 
> do that level of work, for free, as a volunteer, is a real challenge. 
> No free/OSS GUI tool for MacPorts comparable in professionalism to 
> Fink's FinkCommander has ever emerged.

Actually, speaking for myself, I think that a GUI interface would be most horrid.
CLI does the job nicely and well, why on earth would you seek to make an easy, automateable task hard/impossible.
'Course I speak from the perspective of someone who went to great effort to get arduino to build with make, and just for the record I write Qt stuff where appropriate.
James