usage numbers for macports vs. homebrew?

[Arno Hautala]

On Tue, Mar 18, 2014 at 6:42 AM, Clemens Lang <cal at macports.org> wrote:
>  - 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)

I'm pretty sure they consider this a strength. "I already have Python!
Why is MacPorts trying to install a new version!?"

>  - 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).

I'm always conflicted on this one. On the one hand, most users are
probably the primary user on their machine, so installing to
/usr/local without privledges is probably not the worst thing in the
world. On the other, security is a chain of links and this is
definitely one that has been weakened.

It would not be the worst thing in the world to eliminate the need for
root in MacPorts. I know there have been changes in the past related
to this, and I'm not sure what the current state of things is. I think
for the most part, you can install an un-privledged MacPorts to a
non-default location.


Overall, I feel like HomeBrew came around when MacPorts was
established to the point where enough people were using it that there
were plenty of complaints about one feature or another and HomeBrew
was able to capitalize on that. GitHub was the new exciting place to
be as well.

It's unfortunate that a direct attack on MacPorts was the best way to
attract a userbase, but I have to feel it helped them more than hurt.
(The slogan and a port that installed from SVN head in order to stay
up to date were the things that turned me off when I gave it a
chance.)

-- 
arno  s  hautala    /-|   arno at alum.wpi.edu

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