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I don't know if it's representative but nodejs is still at version 0.10.36 : https://github.com/joyent/pkgsrc/blob/trunk/lang/nodejs/Make... This post was supposed to be a troll about them not packaging io.js (they don't).
Thanks for the heads up.
Is there a benefit to this over Homebrew or Macports or am I missing the use case?
The main benefit to me is that I can avoid homebrew and macports, which are utter garbage. There are many other benefits in pkgsrc, including, but not limited to, stable releases instead of rolling release, cross platform support, corporate interest in making the platforms stable, because it's used as a basic building block in Joyent's SmartMachines etc. But all this pales in comparison to the advantage of avoiding h…
Would you like to elaborate on that?
Is there a benefit to this over Homebrew or Macports or am I missing the use case?
Advantages of pkgsrc:
- Everything is a quick binary install. Macports has gotten more and more towards "mostly binary", but I still find it sometimes doing huge compiles.
- Packages generally are installable, and work. Partly due to the quarterly-release model and the all-binary model, I find less breakage (esp. dependency issues) than when doing things in Macports.
- Subjectively, the set of tools feels cleaner.
- Can keep packages synced across OSs, if you use pkgsrc elsewhere (admittedly this is not that common a use case unless you run NetBSD or SmartOS, since typical users of a Linux or other BSD will use the native package manager).
Advantages of Macports,
- More packages
- Often newer packages (e.g. macports is shipping TeXLive 2014, while pkgsrc has some mixture of 2012 and 2013).
- More Mac-specific porting/debugging attention. Somewhat spotty how much, but for example you can choose either X11 or native Aqua versions of emacs, while pkgsrc does only X11 for GUIs.
- Fairly easy to customize packages with the 'variants' system, although in practice I avoid this like the plague because your system quickly ends up compiling things for hours if you use non-default variants.
I don't know if it's representative but nodejs is still at version 0.10.36 : https://github.com/joyent/pkgsrc/blob/trunk/lang/nodejs/Make... This post was supposed to be a troll about them not packaging io.js (they don't).
I'll fix that, and add nodejs-0.12 too. 0.10.36 was current at the time that pkgsrc-2015Q1 was frozen for release, but I can build them from our separate pkgsrc-joyent repository. Thanks for the heads up.
$ pkgin se nodejs
nodejs-0.12.2 V8 JavaScript for clients and servers
nodejs-0.10.38 V8 JavaScript for clients and servers