macports-www VS HomeBrew

macports - https://www.macports.org

I switched to MacPorts after becoming tired of Brew tainting my filesystem.

MacPorts keeps things clean in /opt/local.

https://www.macports.org/

https://saagarjha.com/blog/2019/04/26/thoughts-on-macos-pack...

gh is available via Homebrew, MacPorts, Conda, Spack, Webi, and as a…

I've read the article but some questions still remain. Does Retroactive install the shared dylibs of previous macOS releases? Or does it use an approach similar to https://www.macports.org/ ?

I highly recommend using yt-dlp to download videos in the highest quality available from a wide variety of web sites (notably YouTube, hence the "yt" in the name, but it supports a ton of sites). The best way to install it is with an open-source package manager, either Homebrew or MacPorts. These make it easier to install dependencies like Python 3.11 and optional (but highly recommended) utilities like ffmpeg. Both Homebrew and MacPorts are great, and you can install both side-by-side. I guess I'd recommend Homebrew over MacPorts because it downloads pre-built binaries instead of compiling from source, so it's faster. But again, they are both great.

This is Reddit so they will most likely be people who say to download Macports, but frankly, I don't care, and homebrew is enough for me. I'm not smart, but I know not to download programs/random things without prior research, don't use sudo commands on things you don't know and don't enter your password if you feel unsafe.

The initial setup was quick and painless, but I quickly realized that MacOS does not ship with a package manager (to my surprise!) the Apple Store won't be enough to cover my needs, so onto Google I went. I learned that the two most popular package managers are Homebrew and MacPorts. After reading for a while, I found some users concerned about how Homebrew managed folder permissions (here and here), and with the fact that it installs already compiled binaries, which may be a security/privacy issue. However, it seems that the folder issue was addressed with the ARM release of Homebrew, which now installs under the /opt/homebrew folder.

On Linux, most distributions come with their own package manager out of the box (e.g. Ubuntu / Debian has APT). One annoying thing about macOS as a development platform is that it does not come with one out of the box, and Homebrew has emerged as the most popular third-party management by far. There are other ones like MacPorts as well but I think this is the kind of thing where the popular one tends to become more popular because people don't want to learn/use multiple package manager. I actually used to use MacPorts before I switched to Homebrew just because it's been getting a lot more momentum / features / development and it's where every package is.

Others have offered solutions, but for future reference the actual Terminal commands that failed would be useful; "File not found" sounds like a path error, "Command not found" sounds fixable via Homebrew or Macports

TL;DR, about the section that states software from other UNIX-like OSes is hard to port to MacOS, how about homebrew and macports?

Homebrew is a highly popular package manager on macOS and Linux systems, enabling users to easily install, update, and uninstall command-line tools and applications. Its design philosophy focuses on simplifying the software installation process on macOS, eliminating the need for manual downloads and compilations of software packages.

Homebrew - package manager for linux-based OSs.

Package Manager: Homebrew

Hopping from one distro to another with a different package manager might require some time to adapt. Using a package manager that can be installed on most distro is one way to help you get to work faster. Flatpak is one of them; other alternative are Snap, Nix or Homebrew. Flatpak is a good starter, and if you have a bunch of free time, I suggest trying Nix.

Are you using SQLite that ships with macOS, or SQLite installed from homebrew?

I had a different problem in the past with the SQLite that ships with macOS, and have been using SQLite from homebrew since.

So if it’s the one that comes with macOS that gives you this problem that you are having, try using SQLite from homebrew instead.

https://brew.sh/

Before we begin, make sure you have Homebrew installed on your Mac. Homebrew is a package manager that makes it easy to install software and dependencies. You can install Homebrew by following the instructions on their website: https://brew.sh/

I’m on MacOS and erlang.org, elixir-lang.org, and postgresql.org all suggest installation via Homebrew, which is a very popular package manager for MacOS.

I have always either installed Node from the installer provided by the Nodejs website or, via Brew in macOS. I have also used nvm in the past but did not know that there was a best practice to guide us.

A running Rails application needs a database to connect to. You may already have your database of choice installed, but if not, I recommend PostgreSQL, or Postgres for short. On a Mac, probably the easiest way to install it is with Posrgres.app. Another option, the one I prefer, is to use Homebrew. With Homebrew installed, this command will install PostgreSQL version 16 along with libpq:

On a macOS machine, you can use homebrew by running the command.