Come on, Homebrew doesn't even have gcc.

I am not a Mac user, but a designer using MacBook joined our team last week, and we struggled for half a day with Homebrew. The next day, we installed MacPorts instead, and with just:

$ sudo port install python27 py27-virtualenv gcc46

we were able to proceed and get the whole stack up and running. Not to mention everything from MacPorts is installed nicely under /opt/local.

MacPorts is just way ahead of Homebrew. OTOH, Portage is way ahead of MacPorts ;)

Interesting. This has not been my experience at all.

I had to fight for days to get MacPorts to install anything properly. It gives me flashbacks to the horrors from 3-4 years ago of compiling open source software on Linux.

Homebrew has been fuzzy kittens in comparison.

I'm a relatively new Mac user and never used MacPorts. When I search brew I get these results:

$ brew search gcc

apple-gcc42 gcc

homebrew/versions/gcc45 homebrew/versions/llvm-gcc28

I'm a bit confused since I thought that these are gcc. Can someone tell me what those results mean? :S

This is the way to go:

    $ brew tap homebrew/dupes
    $ brew install gcc --enable-all-languages

To use your new gcc-4.7.2 when installing new packages just add '--use-gcc' at the end of the command.

Hahah don't be naive. Use homebrew. Macports has been broken for years.

clang is better than gcc, IMO

> clang is better than gcc, IMO

Maybe. Maybe not. But I don't think that's the reason homebrew doesn't have gcc. The OP is pointing out homebrew isn't extensive, and misses some commonly used utilities.

clang either does not build or defectively builds certain things on OS X, for instance Ruby 1.9.3. I had to acquire vanilla GCC for this reason the other day, and was relieved to find it in HomeBrew.

Old-ass versions of Clang would build Ruby and PostgreSQL (client) binaries which would segfault upon execution. Try grabbing the latest XCode/command line tools package and you should be fine. I've been running Ruby 1.9.3 with Clang for quite a while.

brew install rbenv ruby-build; /* rc file shenanigans */; rbenv install 1.9.3-p327; rbenv global 1.9.3-p327; ruby --version

Ruby 1.9.3 working fine here and built with clang. What was defective?

By what metric?

I never did the switch because I never had to complain about MacPorts. Last time I looked at Homebrew it had a very small number of receipes compared to MacPorts' ports.

I ran a fairly convincing "Linux-like" alternative desktop using Awesome in XQuartz for about a year before I switched to Linux full time. That was before Homebrew but I'm quite certain that it would have been impossible with it.

Why would I switch to homebrew? I've been using Macports for 2 years now and I never had any issues with it. It works. Also migrating from Macports to homebrew (in case there's a good reason to do it) it would be a painful experience. I would have to start from scratch right?

Personally, I migrated to homebrew due to the ease of writing packages compared to macports. But I happen to enjoy ruby more than custom DSLs. It's probably a division similar to Chef/Puppet.

Having switched and then switched back, I will agree with you. If you're inclined to write your own package installers, Homebrew is worlds better than MacPorts. But otherwise, MacPorts has many more packages that-just-work.

I've had only troubles with Homebrew. For example recent upgrade, and the system no longer works, I had to manually clean up folders.

MacPorts seems better to me, after years of fink in the past. I need to build for universal (386/x86_64) for testing purposes, so it fits well for me.

I actually rebuild stuff later myself, since I can't really package stuff and require people to have that in /opt/local/bin or anywhere else, but a local folder to the main app.

(I use the same way cygwin on windows, like macports - I love the tools, the stuff, I test a lot of things, but afterall for things I want to distribute I compile myself, and post binaries).

based on the sub comments, I'd have to say YMMV.