MacPorts

MacPorts, formerly Darwin Ports is a Software released under the BSD license package management, which aims to facilitate the installation of other free and open source software on Mac OS X and Darwin with the help of port - scripts. A comprehensive collection of such ports is provided. The MacPorts that provide an alternative to Fink.

History

The Darwin ports were initiated in 2002 as part of the now-defunct Open Darwin project; involved were numerous Apple employees, such as Landon Fuller, Kevin Van Vechten and Jordan Hubbard.

In August 2006, after setting OpenDarwin, the project changed its name to MacPorts.

Operation

Installing a package is done with the command line command port install packagename. Then, the source code of the desired software to be downloaded, compiled and installed. You may be required dependencies are previously installed automatically.

Statistics

On 28 April 2005, the project released version 1.0 of the software with about 2500 ports. Version 1.2.1 from 1 April 2006 brought over 3,200 ports. Version 1.3.2 of 9 August 2006 and covered over 3,700 ports. Version 1.5 was released on 15 July 2007. 1.6.0 was released on 27 December 2007 with more than 4,400 ports. In January 2009, the number had already grown to over 5000. With the release of version 1.8.0 on 27 August 2009 MacPorts had over 6,100 ports.