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by alviria 3783 days ago
I find OS X's package/dependency management system to be as cobbled together as Windows'.

Linux got it right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Package_manager

It drives me crazy that Apple removed one the most amazing features of *nix systems: a unified software repository. Brew/brew cask doesn't come close to AUR.
2 comments
masklinn 3783 days ago
> It drives me crazy that Apple removed one the most amazing features of *nix systems: a unified software repository.

It's not a feature of unices, it's a feature of _Linux_ (Ian Murdoch called it "the single biggest advancement Linux has brought to the industry"[0]).

The vast majority of unices never had a "unified software repository", and BSDs (probably the least indirect ancestor of OSX) have port trees, which at the time OSX was born (ignoring the NeXTSTEP ancestry which predates "modern" BSDs and builds directly from 4.3BSD) were a very different beast and not something suitable proprietary unices (because Apple wasn't going to give the OSX commit bit to randos).

And hell, both apt and rpm were busy _being born_, the premier package managers at the time were raw dpkg and pms(1). And pkgtool[1] I guess?

[0] http://ianmurdock.com/solaris/how-package-management-changed...

[1] http://www.slackware.com/config/packages.php

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alviria 3783 days ago
The problem I'm seeing is that what OS X has isn't a unified system, and what Apple promotes isn't want developers want to/can use. So you see time and effort going into tools like this that only last a few years. It results in more fracturing in the end.

In this popular diagram, https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Unix_his..., NeXTSTEP was originally forked in 1988, before Linux really had package management put together. Darwin is from 2001.

Is 14 years not enough time to establish a proprietor supported unified package management system?

My expectations may just be set too high.

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jd3 3783 days ago
I think you are underestimating Apple's apathy when it comes to doing anything of real interest anymore. We don't even get Darwin .iso releases or changelogs anymore. [0] We are left in an arguably worse state of affairs. It's not just sad; it's boring.

[0]: https://opensource.apple.com/static/iso/

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jd3 3783 days ago
https://pkgsrc.joyent.com/install-on-osx/

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Prefix

...

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