usage numbers for macports vs. homebrew?

[Mojca Miklavec]

On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 6:30 PM, Terry Barnum wrote:
> Is anyone aware of usage comparisons between macports and homebrew? Like installed base numbers?

That is probably impossible to get. But even if you had the
statistics, that wouldn't really help you for the sake of argument why
one should or shouldn't support or mention MacPorts. The only proper
way to get better support for MacPorts and that particular piece of
software is to write the package(s) and maintain it yourself.

Mac might be more widespread than Linux (in a certain segment of
users). That statistics alone won't help you get better support for
Mac if all developers of some specific code are Linux users.

> The freeswitch devs are updating the Mac section of their wiki and are claiming that homebrew is more widely supported between platforms. They are reluctant to add information on using macports for freeswitch dependencies because

> a) they don't want to support what they don't know, and

You cannot blame them for that.

> b) (they imply) they don't receive requests for freeswitch + macports.

My recent experience with a few different pieces of software was that
I kept submitting a large number of bug reports upstream. Most of the
time it was either clang-related bugs (when MacPorts switched to
clang, while the default llvm-gcc worked fine), the fact that MacPorts
used the latest version of libraries (for example when FreeType
changed their directory structure and nobody was able to reproduce the
problem due to using an older versions), non-default configuration
arguments, a switch to CMake-based installation which wasn't very well
tested etc.

The bug tracking system always asks for OS and environment, so I
always mentioned MacPorts (just in case, to provide additional hints,
not to put blame on MacPorts).

As a consequence multiple project developers started replying with
"Please stop using MacPorts. MacPorts is broken". All that was most
probably greatly influenced by *my own* bug reports, even though it
really wasn't MacPorts' fault. So sadly I'll have to stop mentioning
MacPorts in future bug reports.

Mojca