usage numbers for macports vs. homebrew?

[Clemens Lang]

Hi

> I’ve given Homebrew a quick try in a VM and it doesn’t seem that different in
> functionality. (Except that I do wish we had something like Homebrew-cask.)
> So, other than the coolness factor (which I guess comes partly from being
> “the new thing”, and partly from using Github for all development and
> distribution), what else is there? Try to keep it factual and based on your
> own experiences using/administering both, please.

I can comment on where I think homebrew is lacking based on when I recently tried it, if that helps:
 - homebrew's uninstall will remove packages that still have dependents without warning you, leaving broken packages
 - It will not automatically detect such broken packages (like MacPorts does with rev-upgrade). Instead, you'll have to manually figure out which packages are broken and rebuild them.
 - homebrew doesn't try as hard as MacPorts to make builds reproducible. If you install vim, it'll use the first python available. When that's system python it uses that, if it's homebrew python it'll use that (and if its MacPorts python, well you get the idea)
 - homebrew doesn't have privilege separation and sandboxing like MacPorts does (they make a case that sudo is bad, so they can't use any of those, making their setup arguable less secure than ours).

And those were just the ones I didn't even have to start thinking about, I'm sure there's more.

-- 
Clemens Lang