A fresh in stall of OSX does not have a /usr/local directory, so it is encapsulated to a certain extent. Homebrew actually installs things into it’s own location at /usr/local/Cellar and then symlinks to the standard locations. 

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Dan Wilcox
@danomatika
danomatika.com
robotcowboy.com

On Oct 10, 2016, at 7:13 AM, Matt Barber <brbrofsvl@gmail.com> wrote:

Thank you. /usr/local always seems iffy to me, but this is after years in linux making sure to make packages to install any software via package manager. The thing I liked about macport's /opt, which is actually something of a standard for non-pacakge-managed software in linux, is that it's relatively encapsulated away from the rest of the directory structure. But as long as it does a reasonable job of uninstalling everything in a package it should be fine.

On Mon, Oct 10, 2016 at 1:44 AM, Dan Wilcox <danomatika@gmail.com> wrote:
I use Homebrew all the time. It’s great. Definitely nicer to use than macports.

I prefer Homebrew as it uses as many of the built in programs and libs already on OSX. That means it’s *much* faster to install/build packages since most things don’t require as many dependencies. You can, of course, also install packages to supersede the often older versions that come with the OS.

Also, it uses the more standard /usr/local as opposed to Macport’s /opt, so most build systems find things automatically.

One more point, Homebrew has prebuilt binaries as well so installing *big things* is relatively quick too.

Actually, when Jonathan sent me the purr data wiki, I did a quick check and pretty much all of the libs y’all install via macports are available in Hombrew.


On Oct 9, 2016, at 11:35 PM, pd-list-request@lists.iem.at wrote:

From: IOhannes m zmölnig <zmoelnig@iem.at>
Subject: Re: [PD] Purr Data beta 2
Date: October 9, 2016 at 3:20:17 PM MDT


On 10/09/2016 11:09 PM, Matt Barber wrote:
Thanks for this, IOhannes. We've been using macports for most of the
development of purr-data on OSX (with a couple of fink installs for some
libraries). Do you find brew to be superior, or was this a comfortable
default?

i cannot really remember what led to the actual decision.
maybe brew was just the cool kid when i looked into it...

however, i'm under the impression that so far i have had far less
troubles with brew than with fink and or macports.
keep in mind, that i hardly ever use any of these in real live.
(so while i probably find brew to be superior, i have virtually zero
data points to be able to defend this position).

gfmd
IOhannes