Products · Product
MacPorts
Raised as a usability problem by 22 people on Hacker News over 16 years (2009–2024), in 19 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Package manager breaks itself, so recovery is slower than reinstallingUnreviewed
20092026- Package manager repeatedly breaks itself, making recovery slower than reinstalling everything2021-03-19
- Package manager breaks so badly that users must delete and reinstall it quarterly2019-03-12
- Packages often out of date and broken, impossible to fix without wiping everything2014-10-02
macOS upgrades break installed ports, forcing manual reinstallUnreviewed
20092026- Upgrading macOS breaks installed ports, forcing a manual inventory and reinstall2021-11-02
- Must manually reinstall all ports after every macOS upgrade, with broken dependencies2019-04-30
- Installing and upgrading software on macOS via MacPorts was horrible2014-05-20
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 22 complaints
- Confusing variant choices for the Java port, unclear which one to pick2024-03-20
- Broke repeatedly under normal install and uninstall use, forcing full directory deletion2023-02-17
- Must jump through hoops to get it working after each macOS major upgrade2023-02-16
- Leaves users to configure things themselves, unlike Homebrew's out-of-box setup2021-12-31
- Upgrading macOS breaks installed ports, forcing a manual inventory and reinstall2021-11-02
- Docs are comprehensive but barely navigable and keyword search works poorly2021-04-17
- Package manager repeatedly breaks itself, making recovery slower than reinstalling everything2021-03-19
- Installs unwanted GUI version and rebuilds entire XFree86 when terminal version requested2020-06-23
- Must manually reinstall all ports after every macOS upgrade, with broken dependencies2019-04-30
- Confusing, terrible UX that causes weird gotchas and reinstalls2019-04-30
- Package manager breaks so badly that users must delete and reinstall it quarterly2019-03-12
- Every library update forces recompiling many ports for twenty minutes2017-12-11
- Packages often out of date and broken, impossible to fix without wiping everything2014-10-02
- Installing and upgrading software on macOS via MacPorts was horrible2014-05-20
- Upgrading packages broke previously installed packages, making it painful to use2012-01-20
- Insists on installing its own copies of many dependencies, causing frustration2011-07-25
- Installing packages silently breaks existing Python scripts by replacing or adding many Python versions2011-04-18
- Took hours to set up; ImageMagick conflicts with Snow Leopard and binaries aren't recognized2010-07-05
- Installing one package forces unwanted rebuilds of perl and GHC, taking hours2010-03-14
- Pulls in its own libraries unexpectedly, causing hard-to-debug build failures2010-03-13
- Customizing builds is hard because every update overwrites portfile edits2010-02-03
- Confusing install results: a second Python and packages scattered across locations2009-05-03