Sapphire: Rust based package manager for macOS

1. pantry

   1 7 180 9.9 C

   pkg manifests (by pkgxdev)

   

   mxcl is the owner of this other project and also the original creator of Homebrew. Someone asked politely to remove a broken package from the list, mxcl gave an oddly combative response, then you see the rest.

   The linked issue is https://github.com/pkgxdev/pantry/issues/5358 where someone asks about the package descriptions being wrong. Turns out they're AI-generated. Now I don't mind that, but they should at least tell you instead of letting you think they're the authors' descriptions. The thread also has a bot giving wrong answers to stuff.

2. InfluxDB

   www.influxdata.com featured

   InfluxDB – Built for High-Performance Time Series Workloads. InfluxDB 3 OSS is now GA. Transform, enrich, and act on time series data directly in the database. Automate critical tasks and eliminate the need to move data externally. Download now.

   

3. sps

   2 2 1,874 9.7 Rust

   Rust based package manager for macOS

   

4. HomeBrew

   3 1,350 43,976 10.0 Ruby

   🍺 The missing package manager for macOS (or Linux)

   

   > I wonder if you can get away with not doing parallel downloads, but just keep the sequential downloads going in the background while it is installing a package?

   I could be wrong, but I believe multiple people, including maintainers, have looked into exactly that :-)

   (I also need to correct myself: there is some work ongoing into concurrent downloads[1]. That work hasn't hit `brew install` yet, where I imagine the question of concurrent traffic volume will become more pressing.)

   [1]: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew/issues/18278

5. atlas

   4 1 108 6.3 Nim

   The Atlas Package cloner. It manages an isolated workspace that contains projects and dependencies. (by nim-lang)

   

   Good points, background downloads would speed it up.

   And the language doesn’t have much to do with that. This project looks to be someone just toying around with Rust or their own PM. Props for that, but the headline has extra implications on HN.

   I recently rewrote a big portion of Atlas [1]. It’s a Nim based dependency manager that clones Nim packages to a `deps/` folder. Initially I was worried about using reference types, etc, for performance reasons. It’s a general habit of mine. Then I remembered that stuff would be negligible compared to the download times and git overhead. Well aside from the SAT solver.

   1: https://github.com/nim-lang/atlas

6. mise

   5 83 16,337 9.9 Rust

   dev tools, env vars, task runner

   

7. artichoke

   6 32 3,116 9.3 Rust

   💎 Artichoke is a Ruby made with Rust

   

   Perhaps you could embed something like https://github.com/artichoke/artichoke to run the Ruby scripts for compatibility.

8. Homebrew

   7 2 27,633 0.0 Ruby

   Found it because I was curious: https://github.com/Homebrew/legacy-homebrew/commit/29d85578e...

   Here are the comparisons to other package managers:

   > Packages are brewed in individual, versioned kegs. Then symlinks are created to give a normal POSIX tree. This way the filesystem is the package database. Everything else is now easy. We are made of win.

   vs MacPorts registry which used its own homebrewed (lol) Receipts files in 2009, and now uses a SQLite DB: https://guide.macports.org/chunked/internals.registry.html#i...

   > I wouldn't worry about it not being root. We don't install anything base enough for it to be a concern (unlike MacPorts or Fink).

   vs MacPorts installs to `/opt/local` as root.

   > Why Not MacPorts?

   > =================

   > 1. MacPorts installs its own libz, its own openssl, etc. It is an autarky.

   > This makes no sense to me. OS X comes with all that shit.

   > 2. MacPorts support Tiger, and PPC. We don't, so things are better optimised.

   There is no “Why Not Fink?” section.

   And because I didn't know the word autarky: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/autarky

9. SaaSHub

   www.saashub.com featured

   SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives

   

10. pik

    8 10 832 0.0 C++

    A new lossy/lossless image format for photos and the internet

    

    This reminds me of the PIK image format (a precursor to JPEG XL) whose name happens to be a word for penis in some languages[0]. In the present case "SPH" is a kink/fetish term meaning "Small Penis Humiliation"[1]. I don't know how many people would think of that, though.

    I am not sure if the lesson is to try harder to avoid offence, or live with the fact that words can have multiple meanings and we can be "professional" enough to ignore some of those meanings in some contexts.

    [0]: https://github.com/google/pik/issues/6

    [1]: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sph

11. cart

    9 1 3 5.4 Shell

    Minimal, unprivileged package manager for MacOS (by heywoodlh)

    

    There’s also `cart` : https://github.com/heywoodlh/cart

    I especially like their claim of being unprivileged. Very early stages just like Sapphire.

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