alt Hacker NewsAs a MacPorts users (generally light-weight, just a few things here and there):
Has anyone gone from MP to HB, or vice versa? Why did you switch from one to the other (and perhaps back again)? What did you find as the pros/cons of each?
Replies
apothegm • today at 4:03 PM
I switched from MP to Homebrew over a decade ago. At the time, Homebrew was less finicky and better at resolving dependency conflicts. It was a lot easier to get a system running MacPorts into a an irretrievably borked state. Not long after, Homebrew install instructions became ubiquitous, whereas with MacPorts it seemed like you always had to figure it out for yourself — if the package was even available, which it more often wasn’t.
Haven’t used MacPorts since. Has it gotten any better at those things?
I switched from Homebrew to MacPorts a few years ago because of Homebrew's aggressive dropping of macOS versions they consider "too old." Even in the top-comment announcement here[1] they are making sure to include that they are removing support, as if they're proud of it!
MacPorts generally doesn't care what version of macOS you run, so here I am. I'll probably never go back to Homebrew. MP is great!
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49681546