Software Alternatives & Reviews

pkgsrc VS MacPorts

Compare pkgsrc VS MacPorts and see what are their differences

pkgsrc logo pkgsrc

pkgsrc is a framework for building over 17,000 open source software packages.

MacPorts logo 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 OS X operating system.
  • pkgsrc Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-30
  • MacPorts Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-29

pkgsrc videos

pkgsrc on ChromeOS

More videos:

  • Review - Using pkgsrc for multi-platform deployments in heterogeneous environments, G Clifford Williams

MacPorts videos

Linux Tools for your Mac. Package Management. HomeBrew, MacPorts, Fink

More videos:

  • Review - Install and Testing MacPorts on an M1 Mac
  • Review - Installing MacPorts on macOS Catalina

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to pkgsrc and MacPorts)
Developer Tools
72 72%
28% 28
Front End Package Manager
Package Manager
51 51%
49% 49
Windows Tools
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, pkgsrc should be more popular than MacPorts. It has been mentiond 8 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

pkgsrc mentions (8)

  • Installing packages without an internet connection?
    It seems according to pkgsrc.org that pkgin might follow the PKG_PATH environment variable. You're supposed to set PKG_PATH="http://cdn.NetBSD.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD/$(uname -p)/$(uname -r|cut -f '1 2' -d.)/All/", and according to uname(1), -p gives the processor architecture and -r gives the operating system [kernel] release. Source: about 1 year ago
  • pkgsrc.se is no more :(
    It seems like pkgsrc.org hasn’t got the news yet. Source: about 1 year ago
  • Slackware 15.0
    I still have a Slackware install that runs some really old stuff I have. I remember working at AN ISP in the 90s and slack was are secure distro. All the important stuff (authentication, configs, etc.) were stored and served from our 'slack pool'. Funny part is now I do a very basic Slackware install that setup pkgsrc (https://pkgsrc.org) on it so I can really experience the best and worst of times! - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago
  • Cross-platform package management: Comprehensive comparison of Pkgsrc and Ravenports article published
    Today the second article on cross-platform package management has been published. It features a short description of what Pkgsrc and Ravenports are and a longer part on how they compare. The test environment and procedure is covered and of course the results are presented. At the end a conclusion is drawn. Source: over 2 years ago
  • First article on cross-platform package management published
    The second one will contain the results of our two months evaluation of Pkgsrc on multiple platforms and a comparison with Ravenports. Source: over 2 years ago
View more

MacPorts mentions (5)

  • Need help with running OpenBSD on VirtualBox
    Brew & macports have libvirt & virt-manager that are used to manage qemu via GUI. Source: about 1 year ago
  • Brew Is a Bad Neighbor
    Or instead of all this, try MacPorts[0], which in my experience has 99% of what you need. The biggest drawbacks are less support from quite niche packages (the ones that sets up its own homebrew tap), and a bit slower updates. But then I found it bearable much more than homebrew’s downsides. [0]: https://macports.org. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • How to prevent WireGuard from starting up (menubar) on MacOS?
    You can install wireguard-go and wireguard-tools (or boringtun, which is Cloudflare's userspace implementation) using either MacPorts or Brew. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Newbie Problem with MacOS Terminal Stuff
    That being said, I'm going to assume that you're working on MacO. Flatpaks aren't going to be an option, that's only going to work if you're using Linux (like Fedora, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Arch, Mint, and so on). If you need to install HandBrake, you may want to consider using macports.org, or brew.sh, these are projects that provide additional libraries and packages for MacOS, this way you can install additional... Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Top 10 trending github repos of the week🚽.
    On macOS you can also install the latest release with MacPorts:. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing pkgsrc and MacPorts, you can also consider the following products

Conda - Binary package manager with support for environments.

Homebrew - The missing package manager for macOS

Homebrew Cask - Install with ease. Your software is just one command away from being ready and raring to go. Forget all about babysitting the install process step by step, from website to cleanup. ls /usr/local/Caskroom google-chrome .

Portage - Portage is source-based package manager used by Gentoo and its descendants. It controls all process from fetching source through building it, installing into clean environment to "merging" with already installed software.

Yay - Yay is an AUR helper written in go, based on the design of yaourt, apacman and pacaur.

Chocolatey - The sane way to manage software on Windows.