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DarwinPorts Now Available as a .dmg
MitsuMirage writes "From Apple's ADC mailing list: 'OpenDarwin.org has released DarwinPorts 1.0 to provide an easy way to install various open source software products on the Darwin OS family (OpenDarwin, Mac OS X and Darwin). Version 1.0 features about 2500 completed ports.'"
They are finally offering something that's NOT straight from CVS.
-mkb
it's only been nine minutes, and it looks like their server melted down... maybe it's just me, I certainly hope so!
I've been using pkgsrc on OS X for years now, since 10.2. Works great, any occasional errors are cleared up quickly after a post to the mailing list. But I'm a NetBSD guy, so there's my bias.
http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/pkgsrc/
Pkgsrc is superior to Fink, for certain-- I'm not familiar with Darwinports and how it stacks up. It's just a different brand of the same strawberry ice cream, I imagine.
Mmm... ice cream. I installed QT just yesterday (so I can compile TyEditor) by simply typing 'make update'... No fuss, no muss.
Are they competing? Are they interoperable? Is one better than the other?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
So, can someone in the know tell me why I might want to use darwin ports over fink?
A little background: I switched from FreeBSD to Linux (Debian) a few years back purely for the ease of patching. I don't go for this compile from source shit at all and would far rather be receiving the same binaries as everyone else in 1/100th the time. So when I heard that the FreeBSD ports concept was being moved to Apple I was, like, "blah" and continued using Fink. A bit.
Why on earth would I want to use darwin ports? I just don't get it.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
All of these systems seem to be trying to shoe-horn UNIX-style packages onto OS X, which seems to be to be incredibly messy. When I compile any UNIX software on OS X, I set the prefix to /opt/{package name}, and install each package in its own subdirectory of /opt (and I have a section in my .bashrc which adds /opt/*/bin to my path). This way, I can deal with UNIX software in exactly the same way as OS X applications. I would like to see UNIX software for OS X distributed as .tar.bz files that expand to a single directory that can be placed anywhere desired. Ideally, I would also like dependencies to be checked at run-time, and automatically fetched if required.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I'm a beginning FreeBSD user and I've discovered that the Unix way is both smart and dumb.
It's smart because it works. It's stupid because it's not user friendly. And often it doesn't work.
FOR FUCK'S SAKE, just because you old-timers are used to making a drawing by putting pieces of graphite on paper with a microscope, doesn't mean it's easy to learn when you're new to it. Build a pencil. It's not as efficient but it's the right time for it.
The biggest problem with installing on a FreeBSD system is that you have to KNOW and REMEMBER so much. There's so many different ways of "installing"/putting files all over the place that you can't use FreeBSD as an operating system once you've read the The Unix and Internet Fundamentals HOWTO and the FreeBSD Handbook
No, that's not enough, it's never enough. There's always an exception to how things are done normally. This package can't install, that port needs gmake instead of make, how do you find out? Not by reading the manual or the installation instructions but because you googled for the error message and someone somewhere had the same problem, and google just happened to index it. It vaguely points you into the right direction and by having above average computer knowledge and above average analytical skills are you able to figure things out MAYBE.
So many tens of thousands of smart people must have stopped using FreeBSD because of all this stupid unusable crap, such a loss for the community.
On the other hand, as I understand it. MacOS X, Darwin and OpenDarwin install/dock programs in one directory. THIS IS GREAT!
Granted, I'm new to UNIX but I still think this is the way to go. Off the top of my head I can think of several reasons:
- When you delete the dir, you KNOW all the files of that program are gone. No "uninstalling" procedure that can go wrong.
- It's easier to create a fine-grained security fence around a single directory than multiple files spread out all over the system.
- Everything is a file, isn't that the UNIX way? If you use the traditional package/ports way of program installation you need to rely on the "magical package manager wizard program" to help you find everything back and delete it. ON THE OTHER HAND with "a program is a directory" you'll have the peace of mind and purity of how things work in the real world. A tool in the real world is mostly also an enclosed system, a thing. PEACE OF MIND PEOPLE? Who isn't frustrated sometimes by PCs?
As I said, just from the top of my head.
I predict that all the traditionalists will have all kinds of reasons that the old ways have to be held on to forever at all costs, but look at the end-result of this. Look at the situation from afar. All new power users of non-Darwin are frustrated by installing programs. I wasn't able to figure out FreeBSD on my own, I needed lots and lots of documentation, among a lot of other things. I WAS able to figure out Windows on my own and I probably won't have trouble with my future Mac. The only problem with Mac OSX is that Mac hardware doesn't have ECC memory, except the server line and Mac OSX isn't copyleft, so in theory they can become evil like MS.
At the moment I need FreeBSD for it's jails. I just have 1 PC so I need a jailed FBSD as a router. However, when I get another PC I WILL switch to something else which has application directories. The most usable operating system in existance at the moment proved it's a good thing.
Can somebody tell me if there's a FreeBSD or OpenBSD fork which uses application dirs which runs on i386. Maybe even something which has jails as well?
Thank you very much in advance, I will do research on my own but as I said, I'm new and I would like to save some time with your help.
I also hope all the old-schoolers are not too stuck in their ways to agree with me about application dirs even just a little bit (think about the end result).
- -- Truth addict for life.
Aha! Now I remember trying it out a few years back myself and having to reinstall OSX again from scratch. I had repressed the incident from my memory.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Darwinports installs everything into /opt/local. It will not overwrite anything. The only stuff it installs out of /opt/local is stuff like the DarwinPortsStartup which is necessary to start system daemons.
I do tend to agree with you concerning the attitude. They seem keener to support darwin than Mac OS X.
I have trouble with passwords among other things.
Seems like you totally confused GNU-Darwin (which hosed your system) with OpenDarwin and it's DarwinPorts project.
No, OpenDarwin is about evolving the Darwin system, GNU-Darwin is about purifying Darwin. ;)
Its much like Linus Torvalds vs. Richard Stallmann.
I confused darwin-ports with gnu-darwin which have the same logo. my bad. gnu-darwin is the poisonous one.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It's the best I have worked with thus far. Much more up to date software. http://www.metadistribution.org/macos/
This is exactly the sort of thing I come up against each and every time I get excited about running Unix software on my Mac. I fear the gap between my knowledge of Unix basics, and what I need to know to ever do anything useful will never be bridged.
I’m old enough to remember 16K of memory being described as “whopping”