[BUGS] Ports collections for MacOSX

[Andrew Reilly]

Hi Sue,

On 21/05/2008, at 04:58, Sue Blake wrote:

> Has anyone used them? Before downloading all the guff and
> remembering how to use the system, I'd like to know that I've
> made the best choice of ports system.

I use macports (http://www.macports.org/), which feels quite a bit  
like FreeBSD ports, but uses TCL for it's infrastructure, rather than  
make.  It also hides a lot more of what's going on, but it generally  
seems to work.  I've got enough of GNOME installed so that I can run  
the pan news reader.  The nice thing about macports, as opposed to  
just installing the FreeBSD or NetBSD ports trees (both of which I've  
done in the past, and both have worked, with more or less tweaking  
(respectively) is that where it's possible or appropriate, the ports  
are configured to use native MacOS features, rather than X11/gnome/ 
whatever.  So gvim on my system has a nice aqua GUI, and gnuplot uses  
an aqua renderer (which is not actually as good as the gnuplot+ X11  
renderer, which can do zooming...)

If you prefer a more Linux flavour, then I believe that lots of linux/ 
Mac folks use fink, which seems to be based on Debian's dpkg/apt  
system.  Can't imagine that that would be the case, though.

If you prefer a more "Macintosh" experience, you can get a lot of the  
big-name packages pre-built as mac installers, through the Apple site: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/unix_open_source/

Cheers,

Andrew



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