[rswail]

+1 for Macports vs Homebrew.

When I first got a Mac about 4 years ago moving from Linux, the first thing I did was compare homebrew and macports.

homebrew was such a cluster-fuck in how it screwed around in /usr/local and its requirements for root etc, especially with Apple's move to basically own most of /usr under SPI.

Macports follows the BSD ports model and since Apple is a BSD based unix underneath, it makes sense. I haven't found anything I've needed that hasn't been ported.

It installs by default in /opt, which is where it should. When needed it will create the appropriate startup configurations for services as part of launchd and in the correct locations.