| > ... near as I can tell, this is a design decision. Yes. A very long time ago, MacPorts relied on file dependencies; if a library was there, it was used. The problem that emerged was that these dependencies often broken. Sometimes Apple shipped a broken update, sometimes users installed broken software. This would cause MacPorts to break. If Apple shipped a broken update (eg, openssl headers that didn't match the openssl library), MacPorts had to switch to their own openssl package in order to be able to keep building software. If users installed broken, too-old, or otherwise non-suitable packages, the MacPorts developers had to help debug their rather random systems to figure out the problem. When you couple this with OS-shipped dependencies that go stale, you necessarily see your dependency tree begin relying on internal dependencies for almost everything, and due to all the software deployed using those dependencies, you can't cull them from the tree. So instead you wind up maintaining a controlled, parallel universe. It's foolish to think this won't happen with Homebrew, too. |