I used fink a bit back in 2001, when OS X was shiny and new, but didn’t really use it much. After abandoning fink back then, I haven’t used any package manager for OS X at all. But OS X is not shiny and new; it’s shipped with ancient versions of Python forever, some of the official versions of Python for Mac have been buggy for me, and I’ve been using Linux more and wanting some of the advantages of package managers.
Introducing Homebrew - the MacOS package manager. A package manager makes it easy to install and update applications on your Macintosh. There are at least nine package managers for the Macintosh. There are the old-timers, Fink and Macports, the relatively new Nix. The Missing Package Manager for macOS (or Linux). It's all Git and Ruby underneath, so hack away with the knowledge that you can easily revert your modifications and merge upstream updates. Teletype for Atom. Great things happen when developers work together—from teaching and sharing knowledge to building better software. Teletype for Atom makes collaborating on code just as easy as it is to code alone, right from your editor. A package manager or package-management system is a collection of software tools that automates the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing computer programs for a computer's operating system in a consistent manner. A package manager deals with packages, distributions of software and data in archive files.Packages contain metadata, such as the software's name. Whenever you need to create an installation package or distribution for Mac OS X 10.5 or later, Packages is the powerful and flexible solution you're looking for. With Packages, you can define which applications, bundles, documents or folders should be part of the payload of your installation packages and where they should be installed.
I use a lot of Debian, so maybe fink would be the way to go again; it seemed nearly dead for a long time. Here’s a great late-2013 overview of the state of package management on Mac OS X. But toying around with Linuxes and functional programming has pointed me to NixOs and the Nix package manager.
Going to nixos.org/nix/, we are advised to install by downloading an install script and piping it to sh. Hm, piping it to less instead doesn’t reveal anything too obviously scary: it downloads and installs a binary for x86_64-linux, i686-linux, or x86_64-darwin. So we’ll try
sudo curl https://nixos.org/nix/install | sh
Package Installer Mac Os X
nix-env can perform one of several operations per invocation.
* Installing software is done with the --install or ‘-i flag. See also the --pre-built or -b flag to install pre-built/binary software only, and the--dry-run flag which runs through the process without doing anything (for testing purposes).
* Upgrading software uses the --upgrade or -u flag. Also the -b flag works here.
* Uninstalling software can be done with the -e flag.
* Querying with --query or -q by default shows the installed packages. See also the --available or -a flags and the --description flag.
So for example nix-env -qc should compare installed versions for what’s available. The command nix-channel --update will update the list of Nix expressions.
matt99b wrote:
I'm downloading something called Xcode 3.2.3 in the blind hope that it contains package maker somewhere.
It does.
Can anyone please let me know ... where to find a simple tutorial on how to use it?
No such thing exists because Package Maker is notoriously hard to use, even for very experienced software engineers.
Tell me, what do you really want to accomplish? I can assure you that no one, anywhere, wants to use Package Maker. For some types of installations, there is no choice. The problem is that there is no alternative to Package Maker.
Best Mac Os Package Manager
Sep 4, 2010 9:43 AM