Slashdot Mirror
Domain: metapkg.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to metapkg.org.
Comments · 16
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Re:Fink?Gentoo MacOS brings the Gentoo Portage package management system to Mac OS X. Yes, it provides functionality similar to Fink and DarwinPorts, and all three solutions have agreed to cooperate in the future.
Portage seems to have several advantages over the other package management tools, including the following summary from the Portage manual:
Multiple versions and revisions of the same package in the tree, conditional dependency resolution and feature support, fine-grained package management, sandboxed safe installation, configuration file protection, profiles, and much more.
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That's why the Metapkg Alliance was formed
The Metapkg Alliance was formed explicitly to improve cooperation between Fink, Gentoo, and DarwinPorts. Besides, have you actually tried Gentoo MacOS yet? Perhaps it offers (or will eventually offer) a significantly large value proposition over the other port distributors. Only time will tell.
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Re:This is quite true...
Actually, I would like not only for it to support Application Bundles, but for it also to be merged with DarwinPorts and Portage (see metapkg), and officially endorsed by Apple and included in the OS by default.
I'm looking forward to the day when I can "emerge -u Safari" and use genkernel to configure xnu! -
Re:An alternative..Well, I've only used fink myself - it was bigger than Darwinports when I started using it.
It still is, to quote MacNN (april 2003): "DarwinPorts currently has 350+ ports in its tree, while Fink has 2,300+."
Here is also an O'Reilly review of both Darwinports and Fink. It is also from April 2003, but it does cover both systems and their advantages fairly well.
Another interesting project (which I do not know too much about) is Metapkg, an alliance between Fink, DarwinPorts, and Gentoo established to
"facilitate delivery of freely available software to Mac OS X."
To quote the June 2003 announcement of Metapkg:While each project will continue to deliver software in their own way, the coordination between projects will:
- accelerate the development efforts of all projects
- avoid unwanted duplication of effort
- improve the consistency, quality, and responsiveness of ports
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Re:An alternative..Well, I've only used fink myself - it was bigger than Darwinports when I started using it.
It still is, to quote MacNN (april 2003): "DarwinPorts currently has 350+ ports in its tree, while Fink has 2,300+."
Here is also an O'Reilly review of both Darwinports and Fink. It is also from April 2003, but it does cover both systems and their advantages fairly well.
Another interesting project (which I do not know too much about) is Metapkg, an alliance between Fink, DarwinPorts, and Gentoo established to
"facilitate delivery of freely available software to Mac OS X."
To quote the June 2003 announcement of Metapkg:While each project will continue to deliver software in their own way, the coordination between projects will:
- accelerate the development efforts of all projects
- avoid unwanted duplication of effort
- improve the consistency, quality, and responsiveness of ports
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Project page here:For those that would like to help out there is a project page (wiki) here: KDE On Darwin
-Benjamin Meyer
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Re:A bit offtopic, but I need to vent
Qt/Mac apps generally look like Mac apps, in the case of KDE stuff, so far the style engine is horked, so it's confused as to what to make things look like, so it's pretty ugly.
It's on the todo list. Qt still doesn't directly call native widgets, but it does use the OS's mechanism for drawing, so, in theory, it looks like native apps if Qt doesn't have any bugs.
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Stop flattering yourself.
Apple didn't change the APSL because of you. Hell, Apple can't possibly think much of your project, considering they've since founded OpenDarwin, and are paying people to create DarwinPorts.
It's kind of sad you need to write these articles yourself. I mean, if people actually liked your distribution, they'd be writing these crappy articles for you! You don't see Linus submitting stories to Slashdot about Linux, do you?
Darwin already has a mature, GPL-licensed, Stallman-compatible software distribution: Fink. Hell, it' even uses apt, the favourite software management tool of people everywhere. There's also the aforementioned DarwinPorts project, for people that wish to use modern, ports-like system on Darwin.
Maybe GNU-Darwin should be focusing on important things: It's not part of MetaPKG, the massive collaborative Darwin software effort, which Fink and DarwinPorts primary members. Even the newcomer Gentoo has been invited to take part. But GNU-Darwin has not.
The future of Darwin software is setting sail, yet GNU-Darwin isn't on the boat. This can't possibly bode well for GNU-Darwin's future relevance on the platform. Maybe they should be working to become a part of that, instead of submitting rubbish to Kuro5hin, Slashdot and OSNews.
Right now, GNU-Darwin is totally irrelevant, and there's nothing on the horizon to change that. If it disappeared tomorrow, no-one would notice. Instead of trolling here at Slashdot, go do something! -
Stop flattering yourself.
Apple didn't change the APSL because of you. Hell, Apple can't possibly think much of your project, considering they've since founded OpenDarwin, and are paying people to create DarwinPorts.
It's kind of sad you need to write these articles yourself. I mean, if people actually liked your distribution, they'd be writing these crappy articles for you! You don't see Linus submitting stories to Slashdot about Linux, do you?
Darwin already has a mature, GPL-licensed, Stallman-compatible software distribution: Fink. Hell, it' even uses apt, the favourite software management tool of people everywhere. There's also the aforementioned DarwinPorts project, for people that wish to use modern, ports-like system on Darwin.
Maybe GNU-Darwin should be focusing on important things: It's not part of MetaPKG, the massive collaborative Darwin software effort, which Fink and DarwinPorts primary members. Even the newcomer Gentoo has been invited to take part. But GNU-Darwin has not.
The future of Darwin software is setting sail, yet GNU-Darwin isn't on the boat. This can't possibly bode well for GNU-Darwin's future relevance on the platform. Maybe they should be working to become a part of that, instead of submitting rubbish to Kuro5hin, Slashdot and OSNews.
Right now, GNU-Darwin is totally irrelevant, and there's nothing on the horizon to change that. If it disappeared tomorrow, no-one would notice. Instead of trolling here at Slashdot, go do something! -
Re:Wasn't there supposed to be a package manager 1
Good question. All I know is that earlier this summer, a GUI frontend for DarwinPorts appeared in a Panther build, only to be withdrawn later. I'd like to know what happened too.
Also, what's going on with the metapkg alliance? Sounded promising, but doesn't look like there's much activity. Looks like Fink is the de facto packaging standard on OS X for now. -
XDarwin and NetBSD/powerpc binary compatibility
Although the post by Emmanual Dreyfus indicates that XDarwin is essentially a test case, this is a rather important test case. If you can run XDarwin, you're just a short hop away from having all of the X11 apps along with it. Also, imagine a package system like the fink working equally well on OSX and NetBSD. You could develop on OSX with its comfortable GUI and deploy to NetBSD with its comfortable price.
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That app was PortsManager.MetaPkg is the result of Fink, OpenDarwin, and Gentoo working together in porting applications to Mac OS X/Darwin. Their separate packaging distributions will still remain.
If anyone has run a beta release of 10.3, they've seen a very early build of the app that these groups have produced.
That was actually PortsManager, and it's part of the OpenDarwin project. OpenDarwin are the people creating DarwinPorts.
I've briefly babble about PortsManager before over at MacSlash.
Install DarwinPorts, then use it to install PortsManager. Simple!
Here's a shiny image of PortsManager, in all its Aqua goodness. -
Re:apt-get for OS X?
Actually Fink, Gentoo and Darwinports have combined forces. If anyone has run a beta release of 10.3, they've seen a very early build of the app that these groups have produced. Think finkcommander done with apple elegance.
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GNU-Darwin is irrelevant.
"The one thing I've never understood is the relationship between OpenDarwin and the distribution concerns."
OpenDarwin distrubute software. They call it DarwinPorts.
OpenDarwin is a project launched in April 2001 which works towards porting BSD-style software to Darwin, and features a crown jewel of DarwinPorts. OpenDarwin was founded by Apple, although they now have no control over the project's operation. Jordan Hubbard is one of many Apple employees closely associated with the project.
"GNU-Darwin almost seems to be hindering the entire Mac OSS unix community."
Virtually no-one in the Macintosh community cares about GNU-Darwin.
GNU-Darwin is a project founded by a person that goes by the name proclus. This proclus character spends a fair majority of his time replying to valid criticism of his project on sites such as Slashdot and MacSlash. Unfortunately, this time would be much better spent working on the actual GNU-Darwin project; GNU-Darwin has nothing to offer that hasn't already been done better by either OpenDarwin or Fink.
"This almost surreal splintering can do nothing but harm the overall effort of ported OSS software for the Mac."
What splintering? GNU-Darwin is totally irrelvant.
GNU-Darwin are not even involved with Metapgk, an alliance formed between DarwinPorts, Fink, and Gentoo. All the major packaging groups in the Macintosh community are part of this alliance.
"If we can't agree that the PPC is the heart of the Mac, than what can we agree on?"
That GNU-Darwin isn't going to exist much longer.
DarwinPorts is going to be a part of Panther, and OpenDarwin is assured of a bright future. Fink and Gentoo are part of Metapkg, so all porting work that OpenDarwin does will help those projects as well.
GNU-Darwin is totally insignificant, has virtually no support in the Macintosh community, and is let by someone with a warped view of reality. When it inevitably disappears, no one will care. -
Linux will Surpass, But This Will Help Mac OS XAs Linux gains more momentum on desktops, so will the popularity of certain Linux applications (most likely--but not all--open source ones).
And as a result of improved support for X Windows on Mac, better source-level compatibility or ports between Linux and Mac OS X, the number of popular applications available on Mac OS X will also increase as Linux becomes more popular.
To simplify things further, future package managers will probably support FreeBSD, Linux and Mac OS X. Perhaps they will be based on MetaPKG or something similar.
I think the ONLY remaining reason not to purchase a Mac this coming Christmas will be the lack of support for specific apps or games. Apple addressed the OS by ditching OS 9, now the CPU and more reasonably comparable price/performance. This leaves lack of support for specific apps or games to be the biggest remaining barrier. WILL SONY AND APPLE EVER SIGN A DEAL TO ENABLE MACS TO RUN PS2/PS3 GAMES?!?!?
I could be totally mistaken but I'm under the impression that porting Windows apps to Mac OS X is more difficult than porting Linux apps to Max OS X. So there you have it. More Linux desktops = more popularity of Linux apps = more "popular" apps available on Mac OS X. Just a guess. Nothing more.
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Good Timing, GenFinDar
The timing of this announcement is no accident. Think of WWDC starting on Monday. The eyes of the tech press will be firmly fixed on Moscone Center in San Francisco; at least on the first day.
So what better time to put forth the story "we can offer Unix/Linux apps from different sources, and do it in a way where we aren't stepping on each others toes!"
This is a really positive step.
