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

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?

Maybe I'm going out on a limb here,

[Asprin]

I can't wait until we see what the Gentoo team has prepared."

Maybe I'm going out on a limb here, but shouldn't it be just like portage on Gentoo? Macs *DO* have CLI's now, right?

Re:hmm

[Asprin]

It's a CLI package manager. You type 'emerge gnuchess' and portage goes out to the Gentoo server, finds the gnuchess source code package, downloads it, asks you some config questions, makes it (compiling from source using optimized compiler settings you've already set up) and installs it.

The advantage is that you get exactly what you ask for, compiled from the ORIGINAL SOURECE. Since you compiled it yourself, you can optimize the compiler to build for your specific platform only.

Re:hmm

[klmth]

The real advantage of portage is not that it installs and compiles gnuchess.
The greatest advantage is that is follows your guidelines for what features should be installed.
"Ssl support, you say? No problem! Next time I update the system, I'll be sure to update every app that has support for it!"

NetBSD pkgsrc

[LizardKing]

NetBSD's pkgsrc collection can be used on MacOS X from what I understand. It's a "compile from source" system much like Gentoos, and has about 3700 packages available.

Chris

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.

This is going to rock

[Znonymous Coward]

Mac OS X is lacking in it's UNIX core. Fink is ok and all, but it's not great (IMHO). This will help spur competition and drive both products to mature and grow on the Mac platform.

I've always been a Mac zelot, now I can be a Genoo zelot as well. Yea!

huh?

[claude_juan]

ok, maybe i'm being silly but the "beauty" of portage is that you compile it from source. 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. for you apple folk who dont know this, it can take hours upon hours to compile certain packages from source. now this is usually only larger things like kde and gnome, but there are a number of larger ones as well that suck to compile. but to date, thats what portage sells to people. "compile it from source!" "its better that way!" anyway, gentoo is cool and all, but its very much becoming the overwhelming cult distro of the linux world. i hope mac users know what they are getting into with this one.

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.

Re:hmm

[zojas]

one clarification: portage asks you no questions. configure-time options are set via USE flags in your make.conf file. see the portage user guide and the USE flag guide.

no questions means you can type 'emerge kde' and come back later after it has installed possibly dozens of packages with no more input from you.

Oh, boy

[Anonymous Coward]

I love Mac OS X, but I'm also a fan of running Gentoo Linux because of its powerful package management system.

Ladies and gentlemen, in case you're wondering, THIS is what "missing the point" looks like in its purest form.

Anybody who chooses their operating system based not on the software that's available for that operating system but the method for installing that software is missing the point. Grandly.