It's that time again; I suspect that Mavericks will be released in the next few weeks, so I get the once-every-year-(or-so) chance to experiment and modify the hell out of my OS X installation because I'll just do a fresh install soon anyway. This time around I'm experimenting with package managers.

I've actually tried really hard to avoid ever having to use them. I started using Slackware in high school, and after some brief experimentation (in college) with Ubuntu, I took up OS X as my main OS. But, since building from source code is somewhat of a nightmare on a Mac--at least compared to what I was used to--I started to look into package management solutions.

The terrain was difficult to navigate. It seemed like people had some really strong opinions on which one was the best and which ones were on their way out. Since I didn't know who to believe, I just stuck to manual building. But, since I'm going to get a tabula rasa in a few weeks, I thought I'd take this opportunity to document this terrain exploring and present my finding in the most impartial manner that I'm capable of.

Before I start, I want to make a few things clear. (1) There is some disagreement on what actually constitutes a package manager. Here, I'm referring broadly to any centralized software installation framework that tracks or resolves dependencies, whether it builds from source or not. (2) I haven't had the time to become an expert on all of the managers I audited, so keep that in mind. (3) Not only are all of these package managers open source, but many of them have robust configuration options, so I'll be talking mostly about default behavior from the perspective of a new user.

If my old editions of O'Reilly books discussing Mac software are any indication, MacPorts and Fink were the two best options available. Then Homebrew came on the scene and a lot of people seem to be raving about it. I started off with the intention of only trying out these three but in the course of my research, I learned about two others that I wanted to give a chance.

To see a table summary of my findings, you can just scroll down to the end of this post.

Rudix

Rudix is a binary-only package manager that attempts a "hassle-free" way of getting Unix programs on a Mac. It doesn't have many packages available yet, but it has no trouble at all installing and uninstalling the ones that it does offer. For example, their 'Go' installation was the most painless installation of a language that I've ever experienced. My complaints are that (a) the binaries go directly to /usr/bin, so they are not sandboxed, and (b) the man files for these tools were not installed with the binaries.

MacPorts

MacPorts was one of the most recommended package management solutions that I came across in my research. It also probably attracted the most flak. It was built with the likeness of FreeBSD's Ports system, so it's a source building manager. What I liked about MacPorts was the fact that the installation was painless (it updated my PATH for me!), the compiled binaries were sandboxed in /opt/local, and the wealth of packages available was hard not to love.

An interesting thing about MacPorts is that it eschews Apple-supplied libraries and links sources against its own. A benefit of this is that it can ensure a consistent experience across OS X versions and whatever whimsical decisions Apple may choose to make in the future. The drawback to this approach is that building what appears, prima facie, to be a small package may require an extraordinarily large amount of huge programs and libraries to be built as dependencies.

Fink

Fink is modeled after Debian's dpkg and apt-get. Having used Debian-based distros in the past, I was excited to see what Fink had to offer. Like apt-get, Fink can install binaries or build from source. What wasn't like apt-get was that a completely different command was used to build from source ("fink") than to install the binaries. This was somewhat confusing. Furthermore, there is no binary installer for 10.6 to 10.8, so installation was a bit harrowing. Once it was installed, though, and I got used to the separate commands and its differences to "apt-get", I was pleased that my PATH was automatically updated and that the installed binaries were appropriately sandboxed.

Homebrew

Like I mentioned above, a lot of people are really excited about Homebrew. It is being developed with the intention to correct (what it perceived to be) MacPorts' shortcomings. From what I can tell, it tries really hard to work with OS X's existing framework/libraries. For this reason, Homebrew is probably a good choice for someone who is using it to install the occasional tool on a single user system.

A neat thing about Homebrew is that it is written very simply in ruby. Its "recipes" to install packages are easy-to-read ruby scripts. They are also very easy to modify and the community encourages upstream development.

Something not-so-neat about Homebrew is that it is publicly antagonistic towards MacPorts. This is probably something that only I care about, though.

pkgsrc/pkgin

Again, I started with the intention of only auditing Fink, Homebrew and MacPorts. When I learned about pkgsrc, I thought that it was too obscure to be a serious contender and I was considering not looking into it further. I am so glad that, for completeness' sake, I decided to try it out because I virtually have only good things to say about it.

pkgsrc started as NetBSD's package management solution. Given NetBSD's dedication to portability, it is perhaps not a surprise that their package manager would attempt to follow suit. It has now been adapted for use on over a dozen different operating systems. Among these are AIX, Solaris, HP-UX, GNU/Linux, Windows (via Cygwin and Interix) and, of course, OS X. It is the default manager on DragonflyBSD and was even the default manager on a now-discontinued GNU/Linux distro, Bluewall Linux. It is similar to (and, indeed, was forked from) FreeBSD's ports system.

I don't think many Mac power-users know that this is an option for them which is a shame because it turned out to be my favorite. After following some fairly simple steps, a mature and sophisticated package manager with over 8,000 packages is at your disposal.

Probably the best thing about pkgsrc from the perspective of Mac users is a tool called pkgin. It's an apt-like tool for installing binaries from pkgsrc. Installing strange Unix tools on OS X *can not* be easier.

The only caveat I should mention is that I haven't tested installing Python with it because I'm still too far away from Mavericks to risk botching my environment that badly. I suspect that it would cause issues because pkgsrc, being a NetBSD project, can't be as aware of OS X framework idiosyncracies as a Mac-specific package manager can.

I'd like to write more on this topic, but this post is getting unwieldy. I plan to talk more about pkgsrc and OS X in another post but, for this one, I'll conclude with the "too-long-didn't-read" version of my journey through package-manager-land.

category Rudix MacPorts Fink Homebrew pkgsrc / pkgin Homepage rudix.org

MacPorts.org fink.thetis.ig42.org brew.sh pkgsrc.org and pkgin.net Twitter @rudix4mac (updates often) @macports (last tweet in July) @finkmac (hasn't had update since 2010) @machomebrew (very active) @pkgsrc (last tweet in September) Year project started 2005 2002 2001 2009 Support for Darwin added in 2001 Number of packages 488 (but `rudix available | wc -l` says 351) 17,680 (but `port list | wc -l` says 17,686) 7,951. `apt-cache search . | wc -l` says 209 stable binary .deps) 2,498. `brew search | wc -l` says 2,591. This is not counting various extra "taps" 8,884 binaries for OS X (according to `pkgin available | wc -l`) Source/binary/both? Binary only Traditionally only source Option for both Source, but also binaries through "bottles" Both. Traditional pkgsrc will do both but using only pkgin will grab the binaries Language written in Python Tcl Perl (front-end) Ruby C License BSD BSD GPL :( BSD BSD Gui options Not really... but there's an internet package browsing option Currently three Two: fink commander, and phynchronicity Nope, but online package browser at Braumeister.org Online package browser at pkgsrc.se but none others that I can find Default prefix Directly to /usr/local /opt/local /sw /usr/local/Cellar. Programs symlink to /usr/local/bin /usr/pkg Power-PC support Not anymore Yes because it is built from source Yes Not traditionally, but there are forks available that might provide this functionality Not unless you build from source Lastest GCC available Not available 4.8.1 4.8 4.9 No binary available but pkgsrc has 4.8 Python stuff Not available Py27 and 33 and a lot of great packages Py23 and 33 and a lot of great packages Py27 and 33. I couldn't find any packages but the python installs pip and easy_install Py27 and 33 and a lot of great packages. (see warning above) Installation of package manager Very easy and fast Very easy and fast Nightmarish (no binary installer for 10.6 - 10.8) Easy as pie Very easy and fast with these instructions Uninstallation of package manager Easy and painless Hell-ish Very easy and fast Relatively easy if you follow this gist: https://gist.github.com/mxcl/1173223 Not sure, probably just a rm -rf-ing the /usr/pkg and /usr/pkgsrc directories Installation of packages Extremely easy Slow, since it builds from source The source builds are understandably slow, but the binaries are (obviously) quick Source compilation is obviously slow. I've had some linking issues sometimes. Trivially easy Uninstallation of packages Easy and painless Easy Easy and fast Very easy Trivially easy Community support Not very much is required Great Not so great Very very good A few websites have some great documentation but some other information it is hard to find OS X-specific info. Development Git. Primarily lead by one person. 5 contributors. Subversion. Very happening. Many many developers. Git. 14 GitHub contributors. Commits are infrequent Git. Most vibrant. Over 3,000 contributors. "Recipes" for compilation are easily modified and you are encouraged to submit pull requests. This project is very easy to contribute to. Pkgsrc is CVS. Pkgin is Git. pkgsrc is well backed by the NetBSD Foundation

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