What is the difference/usage of homebrew, macports or other package installation tools? [closed]

Solution 1:

MacPorts is the way to go.

1. Like @user475443 pointed, MacPorts has many many more packages. With brew you'll find yourself trapped soon because the formula you need doesn't exist.

2. MacPorts is a native application: C + TCL. You don't need Ruby at all. To install Ruby on Mac OS X you might need MacPorts, so just go with MacPorts and you'll be happy.

3. MacPorts is really stable, in 8 years I never had a problem with it, and my entire Unix ecosystem relay on it.

4. If you are a PHP developer you can install the last version of Apache (Mac OS X uses 2.2), PHP and all the extensions you need, then upgrade all with one command. Forget to do the same with Homebrew.

5. MacPorts support groups.

   foo@macpro:~/ port select --summary
   
   Name        Selected      Options
   ====        ========      =======
   db          none          db46 none
   gcc         none          gcc42 llvm-gcc42 mp-gcc48 none
   llvm        none          mp-llvm-3.3 none
   mysql       mysql56       mysql56 none
   php         php55         php55 php56 none
   postgresql  postgresql94  postgresql93 postgresql94 none
   python      none          python24 python25-apple python26-apple python27 python27-apple none
   

   If you have both PHP55 and PHP56 installed (with many different extensions), you can swap between them with just one command. All the relative extensions are part of the group and they will be activated within the chosen group: php55 or php56. I'm not sure Homebrew has this feature.

6. Rubists like to rewrite everything in Ruby, because the only thing they are at ease is Ruby itself.

Solution 2:

Homebrew and macports both solve the same problem - that is the installation of common libraries and utilities that are not bundled with osx.

Typically these are development related libraries and the most common use of these tools is for developers working on osx.

They both need the xcode command line tools installed (which you can download separately from https://developer.apple.com/), and for some specific packages you will need the entire xcode IDE installed.

xcode can be installed from the mac app store, its a free download but it takes a while since its around 5GB (if I remember correctly).

macports is an osx version of the port utility from BSD (as osx is derived from BSD, this was a natural choice). For anyone familiar with any of the BSD distributions, macports will feel right at home.

One major difference between homebrew and macports; and the reason I prefer homebrew is that it will not overwrite things that should be installed "natively" in osx. This means that if there is a native package available, homebrew will notify you instead of overwriting it and causing problems further down the line. It also installs libraries in the user space (thus, you don't need to use "sudo" to install things). This helps when getting rid of libraries as well since everything is in a path accessible to you.

homebrew also enjoys a more active user community and its packages (called formulas) are updated quite often.

macports does not overwrite native OSX packages - it supplies its own version - This is the main reason I prefer macports over home-brew, you need to be certain of what you are using and Apple's change at different times to the ports and have been know to be years behind updates in some projects

Can you give a reference showing that macports overwrites native OS X packages? As far as I can tell, all macports installation happens in /opt/local

Perhaps I should clarify - I did not say anywhere in my answer that macports overwrites OSX native packages. They both install items separately.

Homebrew will warn you when you should install things "natively" (using the library/tool's preferred installer) for better compatibility. This is what I meant. It will also use as many of the local libraries that are available in OS X. From the wiki:

We really don’t like dupes in Homebrew/homebrew

However, we do like dupes in the tap!

Stuff that comes with OS X or is a library that is provided by RubyGems, CPAN or PyPi should not be duped. There are good reasons for this:

• Duplicate libraries regularly break builds
• Subtle bugs emerge with duplicate libraries, and to a lesser extent, duplicate tools
• We want you to try harder to make your formula work with what OS X comes with

You can optionally overwrite the macosx supplied versions of utilities with homebrew.

Solution 3:

Currently, Macports has many more packages (~18.6 K) than there are Homebrew formulae (~3.1K), owing to its maturity. Homebrew is slowly catching up though.

Macport packages tend to be maintained by a single person.

Macports can keep multiple versions of packages around, and you can enable or disable them to test things out. Sometimes this list can get corrupted and you have to manually edit it to get things back in order, although this is not too hard.

Both package managers will ask to be regularly updated. This can take some time.

Note: you can have both package managers on your system! It is not one or the other. Brew might complain but Macports won't.

Also, if you are dealing with python or ruby packages, use a virtual environment wherever possible.

Solution 4:

By default, Homebrew installs packages to your /usr/local. Macport commands require sudo to install and upgrade (similar to apt-get in Ubuntu).

For more detail:

This site suggests using Hombrew: http://deephill.com/macports-vs-homebrew/

whereas this site lists the advantages of using Macports: http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1207907

I also switched from Ubuntu recently, and I enjoy using homebrew (it's simple and easy to use!), but if you feel attached to using sudo, Macports might be the better way to go!