Both macports and fink are poor compared to recent linux package managers, which is no surprise since they follow an approach (bsd ports) Apple doesn't use for it's own software. What is really irritating is that macports-installed shared libraries occasionally cause linking problems.
Also it's important to keep in mind although you get XCode when you buy OSX, it requires a separate installation step that's both time consuming and easy to overlook and if you're getting OSX with a new computer you'll probably want to ignore the one that comes with it and download the most recent version from ADC which is clumsy compared to apt, yum, conary, etc.
Both macports and fink are poor compared to recent linux package managers, which is no surprise since they follow an approach (bsd ports) Apple doesn't use for it's own software. What is really irritating is that macports-installed shared libraries occasionally cause linking problems.
Also it's important to keep in mind although you get XCode when you buy OSX, it requires a separate installation step that's both time consuming and easy to overlook and if you're getting OSX with a new computer you'll probably want to ignore the one that comes with it and download the most recent version from ADC which is clumsy compared to apt, yum, conary, etc.