Gentoo's Portage to be Ported to Mac OS X

billatq writes "I love Mac OS X, but I'm also a fan of running Gentoo Linux because of its powerful package management system. A Debian-style system (fink) is already on Mac OS X, but now it seems that Gentoo's Portage is going to be available for it. Gentoo's announcement can be found on their web site. I can't wait until we see what the Gentoo team has prepared."

Comments

hmm

[rastachops]

I've never used Portage before, I have used fink but didn't like it much.... so whats so good about Portage and why should I download it?

Re:hmm

[m0rph3us0]

Another advantage of portage is that if you dont compile everything from source you get broken code. Especially since 90% of the code speed up from compiling yourself comes from libc and and the kernel there really isn't much point.

Re:hmm

[zojas]

portage differs from fink in that it is quite easy for you to specify system-wide compile-time options and optimization flags with portage. for example: don't like gnome? USE='-gnome' in your make.conf file will prevent gnome support from being compiled into every single package you install with portage.

GTK+ Native or X-Windowed?

[erebus24]

Being a gentoo fan I know the portage for Mac OS X is a good thing (tm)... But I hate having to use the X11 server on my mac, I'd prefer everything to be as native as possible. So will it include the option to use one of the gtk+ Mac native ports (and possibly other widget/graphics libraries) or will we still have to crank up X11 before we can run any of the programs we install through the portage?

OpenDarwin and Darwinports

[Leimy]

Don't forget about Darwinports.

OS X will bring more geeks to the world

[chia_monkey]

Does anyone else see all this as such a beautiful way to bring more *NIX geeks to the world? The Mac used to be considered a "toy". REAL programmers code on their PCs or Sparc stations. But now you have this Mac toy with such powerful UNIX underpinnings that is really getting the programming and hacking community excited.

I can see kids toying around on their parent's Mac. They tinker. They tinker more. Soon they're playing with Fink or with Gentoo. All of a sudden there are soooo many *NIX hackers out there that didn't even mean to be in the arena.

I know I'm guilty of it. And thousands more will be in no time at all.

Re:OS X will bring more geeks to the world

[torpor]

I've been a geek since '78 and a unix nerd since '82. My first Unix box was a MIPS Magnum pizzabox.

I remember the day Linus told the minix list about his little linux project. I've used Linux, in some way, pretty much every day since then.

I've watched Be come and go. I still have a BeBox. I still have a stack of SGI Indy's too, which I always refer to as the "Old New Magnums".

I make geek toys.

You would have to tear my tiBook500 Rev *A* from my cold dead hard fingers. As a "Switcher", Apple can do no wrong in my book.

Show me a better Unix laptop and I'll switch.

Re:huh?

[clarkcox3]

it seems to me that with the limited number of varying mac processors out there that it would be a much better deal if the mac portage would just install a binary that was precompiled for your particular processor

There is still something to be said for compiling from source, even on a platform as homogenous as the mac. There are significant differences between the G3 and G4, and even among various G3s and G4s. The variety of optimal optimization settings will only increase if/when Apple introduces PPC970-based Macs (crossing fingers).

i hope mac users know what they are getting into with this one.

I would say that any mac user downloading a CLI-based package management tool, probably knows what they are getting in to.