“One of the first things I started doing almost immediately after installing Mac OS X when it first came out in March 2001, was to begin downloading and building Unix-based open source applications. I was able to build quite a few applications by performing the usual configure/make/make install sequence.” Read the rest of the article at MacDevCenter.
Managing Packages on Panther with DarwinPorts
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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i followed it, got xmms installed.. it is still beta
i ran into a couple of problems, but so far xmms works = )
Just two emendations to the article:
– The GUI manager for DarwinPorts has been dropped and is under revision: its sources don’t have been yet released to the public;
– To create a package, the correct comand is ‘port pkg’ and not ‘port package’
Ok, so a huge majority of apps follow this 3 step install process. Why don’y we get a standard ‘install’ script that runs all 3 in sequence?
chance they’re going to eventually package Darwin up into a “distro”?
It’s just not that simple, really. Since i’ve written several darwinports packages i can explain. darwinports takes a hands-off approach from modifying tarballs. we like to use the official tarball download location for reasons of mirroring, validity, etc. this means we can’t modify these tarballs if we want to use the official sources. a lot of ports require “minor” modifications. a makefile patch here, a headerfile patch there, and often times nothing. however enough programs require these small patches to work in os x that we have to have a system to control such patches without modifying said tarballs. now eventually over the long run these patches make it into the actual package so such hacks are not needed, but unfortunately it’s 10 times quicker to make a quick hack to fix the os x incompatabilities than it is to submit patches to the developers and expect them to be in the stable release sometime soon.