Audience
IT professionals seeking an easy-to-use solution for compiling, installing, and upgrading software on the Mac operating system
About MacPorts
The MacPorts Project is an open-source community initiative to design an easy-to-use system for compiling, installing, and upgrading either command-line, X11, or Aqua-based open-source software on the Mac operating system. To that end, we provide the command-line driven MacPorts software package under a 3-Clause BSD License, and through it easy access to thousands of ports that greatly simplify the task of compiling and installing open-source software on your Mac. We provide a single software tree that attempts to track the latest release of every software title (port) we distribute, without splitting them into “stable” vs. “unstable” branches, targeting mainly macOS Mojave v10.14 and later (including macOS Monterey v12 on both Intel and Apple Silicon). There are thousands of ports in our tree, distributed among different categories, and more are being added on a regular basis.
Other Popular Alternatives & Related Software
Rudix
Rudix is a build system target on macOS (formerly known as Mac OS X) with minor support to OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and Linux. The build system (also called "ports") provides step-by-step instructions for building third-party software, entirely from source code. Rudix provides more than a pure ports framework, it comes with packages, and precompiled software bundled up in a nice format (files *.pkg) for easy installation on your Mac. If you want to collaborate on the project, visit us at GitHub/rudix-mac or at our mirror at GitLab/rudix. Use the GitHub issue tracker to submit bugs or request features. Similar projects or alternatives to Rudix are Fink, MacPorts, pkgsrc, and Homebrew. Packages are compiled and tested on macOS Big Sur (Version 11, Intel only!), Catalina (Version 10.15) and OS X El Capitan (Version 10.11). Every package is self-contained and has everything it needs to work. The binaries, libraries, and documentation will be installed under /usr/local/.
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Zero Install
A decentralized cross-platform software installation system. Works on Linux, Windows and macOS. Fully open-source. Run apps with a single click. Run applications without having to install them first. Control everything from a command line or graphical interface. You control your own computer. You don't have to guess what happens during installation. Mix and match stable and experimental apps on a single system. Anyone can distribute software. Create one package that works on multiple platforms. Publish on any static web host; no central point of control. With dependency handling and automatic updates. Security is central. Installing an app doesn't grant it administrator access. Digital signatures are always checked before new software is run. Apps can share libraries without having to trust each other. Adds automatic self-updating, staged rollouts and various improvements to desktop integration.
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Fink
The Fink project wants to bring the full world of Unix open source software to Darwin and Mac OS X. We modify Unix software so that it compiles and runs on Mac OS X ("port" it) and make it available for download as a coherent distribution. Fink uses Debian tools like dpkg and apt-get to provide powerful binary package management. You can choose whether you want to download precompiled binary packages or build everything from source. The project offers precompiled binary packages as well as a fully automated build-from-source system. Mac OS X includes only a basic set of command-line tools. Fink brings you enhancements for these tools as well as a selection of graphical applications developed for Linux and other Unix variants. With Fink the compile process is fully automated; you'll never have to worry about Makefiles or configure scripts and their parameters again. The dependency system automatically takes care that all required libraries are present.
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Cargo
Cargo is the Rust package manager. Cargo downloads your Rust package's dependencies, compiles your packages, makes distributable packages, and uploads them to crates.io, the Rust community’s package registry. You can contribute to this book on GitHub. To get started with Cargo, install Cargo (and Rust) and set up your first crate. The commands will let you interact with Cargo using its command-line interface. A Rust crate is either a library or an executable program, referred to as either a library crate or a binary crate, respectively. Loosely, the term crate may refer to either the source code of the target or to the compiled artifact that the target produces. It may also refer to a compressed package fetched from a registry. Your crates can depend on other libraries from crates.io or other registries, git repositories, or subdirectories on your local file system. You can also temporarily override the location of a dependency.
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Pricing
Starting Price:
Free
Free Version:
Free Version available.
Integrations
Company Information
MacPorts
www.macports.org
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Product Details
Platforms Supported
Mac
Training
Documentation
Support
Online
