Mr eel
Word of the Day
I Only Have One Thing to Say
Wii!
Australian launch last night. I really wish I didn’t have to go to work.
Donkey Kong Jungle Beat
Beejamin: het
I was playing donkey kong last night
9:56
Mr eel: yeeeh
9:56
Beejamin: and I got to thinking…
if a white singlet is a wife beater
is a camo singlet a jungle beater?
MacPorts (aka Darwinports) vs. FreeBSD ports
No contest in my opinion. FreeBSD Ports is a nasty piece of work — a nice idea badly implemented. I find it one of the more frustrating aspects of doing development work. It’s the kind of system that insists on you reading documentation every time you want to do something a bit different — because the command is usually obscure — and makes you cd about the filesystem all the time.
I thought package management was supposed to be easier than this. Granted it’s better than downloading a bunch of apps, compiling and praying you got the dependencies right, but still it feels more difficult than it should be. Since I’ve spent some time using MacPorts, it really throws FreeBSD ports into a harsh light.
Searching for ports (MacPorts/FreeBSD Ports)
$ port search port_name vs. $ cd /user/ports $ make search name=port_name
Ok that’s not so bad I guess, but still if they FreeBSD ports can put all the various pkg_* apps in your path, can’t it do the same for searching? Yuck.
Some more examples
Installing a package (MacPorts/FreeBSD Ports)
$ port install postgresql8 vs. $ cd /user/ports/db/postgresql8 $ make install
Updating the ports tree
$ port selfupdate vs. $ cvsup -L 2 -h cvsup.FreeBSD.org /usr/share/examples/cvsup/ports-supfile
Yuck! That’s nasty. Unless you’re doing it all the time you’re bound to forget it.
Most annoying in FreeBSD is that the various tasks — installing uninstalling, listing, searching — are all done by different commands whereas in MacPorts it’s just the port command.
So I spend my time using FreeBSD Ports wishing it worked like my Mac. I find it particularly amusing that the port command emphasises some of the best aspects of the Mac — consistency, discoverability, simplicity. Ironic considering it’s a CL app, which some folk seem to think gives license to building something obtuse and annoying.
I love you MacPorts
* weeps
P.S. I still think FreeBSD is AWESOME!