I still use MacPorts because it's actually a proper package management system. Homebrew is not, and its limitations started to show a long time ago. The obnoxious assertion that Homebrew should take complete control of /usr/local AND be able to install in there as an
unprivileged user is utterly ridiculous. It's just some nonsense that the author cooked up in his own head, contradicting a long history of convention regarding the use of /usr/local.
The maintainers of packages are supposed to port their software to the relevant platform, that's their job, and yes sometimes this takes some work, whereas Homebrew seems to assume that ./configure; make; make install should flawlessly work out of the box for pretty much anything (this is not true). The fact that they actively discourage even trying to install outside of /usr/local is simply laziness (and not in a good way). This is a foolish and naive approach, and pursuing this idealistic, reductive approach for "simplicitly" breaks down very, very quickly. MacPorts is a well behaved, self-contained system, and a well designed one at that. Homebrew just dumps everything into a system directory that it really shouldn't have exclusive rights to in the first place (/usr/local).
Moreover, there is nothing wrong with installing extra compilers, libraries, etc, under /opt/local and having them run alongside the system libraries. Lots of systems have provisions for doing something like this.
Also, using version control systems as distribution and deployment systems is a horrible anti-pattern and I really, really wish people would stop doing this.
Homebrew's documentation is terrible. Its terminology is facile and stupid in the way it analogizes everything with beer.
The maintainers of packages are supposed to port their software to the relevant platform, that's their job, and yes sometimes this takes some work, whereas Homebrew seems to assume that ./configure; make; make install should flawlessly work out of the box for pretty much anything (this is not true). The fact that they actively discourage even trying to install outside of /usr/local is simply laziness (and not in a good way). This is a foolish and naive approach, and pursuing this idealistic, reductive approach for "simplicitly" breaks down very, very quickly. MacPorts is a well behaved, self-contained system, and a well designed one at that. Homebrew just dumps everything into a system directory that it really shouldn't have exclusive rights to in the first place (/usr/local).
Moreover, there is nothing wrong with installing extra compilers, libraries, etc, under /opt/local and having them run alongside the system libraries. Lots of systems have provisions for doing something like this.
Also, using version control systems as distribution and deployment systems is a horrible anti-pattern and I really, really wish people would stop doing this.
Homebrew's documentation is terrible. Its terminology is facile and stupid in the way it analogizes everything with beer.