Background - So I was following a discussion on another site about
Apple's Aperture being replaced. Many people are looking for
alternatives and there has been essentially no mention of open source
alternatives (like DarkTable, LightZone or DigiKam). Most of these
folks are photographers and would never consider installing MacPorts
and XCode in order to get an application they might otherwise find
interesting.
1) How much work would it take to have a mode in MacPorts where it
only installs pre-compiled packages? Is the assumption that XCode is
present so deeply ingrained that Macports-base would have to be
extensively re-designed?
For example, I would think 'port search' would need to be modified to
only show the pre-compiled packages (available for that platform) and
somehow indicate that only the default variants are available.
Perhaps a fork of Pallet could be so modified?
2) Are there a worthwhile number of packages that would then be
available? I know my own MythTV ports run into the OpenSSL conflict
and therefore aren't available as binaries. From
http://packages.macports.org/ it appears we don't have binary
packages for DarktTable or DigiKam (and no port of LightZone).
OTOH, someone posted some information several weeks ago explaining
how to determine if that licence conflict really applies or not.
(Involves inspecting library linkages, as I recall.) I get the
impression that our current policy is quite conservative and that a
number of packages (many?) may actually qualify for binary
distribution with some analysis and verification.
Craig
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