

What's the big diff between homebrew and macports? - mainguy
http://mikemainguy.blogspot.com/2011/09/whats-difference-between-macports-and.html

======
beniamino
The differences are that homebrew installs to /usr/local by default, doesn't
keep track of package versions, and doesn't install its own versions of
libraries that come with OS X (and therefore might be screwed up by an OS
update). These are all Really Bad Ideas, which make homebrew technically
inferior to macports, and less stable. However, they also make homebrew really
simple, so it's much quicker and less cumbersome to use. Almost the definition
of quick-and-dirty.

------
jarin
Homebrew does not use sudo, installs everything to /usr/local (which keeps
major OS X updates from destroying your dev environment), and it's much easier
to edit and contribute recipes back to the main project (for me, anyway).

------
zmanji
Homebrew has far better dependency management then Macports. I fine that using
Macports you have to download and compile the kitchen sink every time you want
a moderately complex package.

------
rix0r
Homebrew will use libraries that are already present on your system, instead
of keeping a separate copy of everything.

The downside may be decreased stability, but the reduced compilation times
make up for that, to me (and haven't had a problem yet).

------
jweede
Macports is still the winner for me. They recently acquired a build server and
have started distributing binaries some of their packages.

------
gks
another post from the writer of a terriblely short and uninformative article.

Getting old.. really old.

~~~
jinushaun
If I didn't already know the difference between Macport and Homebrew, this
article wouldn't have explained it to me. The explanations from HNers above
are much more informative and to-the-point.

