Downgrading Homebrew

21

Unsurprisingly, each camp claims the advantage. Like you, I believe there is little difference. This was never a factor in my decision of which to use.

I would rephrase this as “Installing third-party software isn’t a problem, unless someone has nefarious intentions.” That goes for any app you might get from the App Store as well.

I’d say this is probably true, because the MacPorts philosophy is to be independent from macOS as much as possible. Going forward, I think this gap will narrow.

There are pluses and minuses to both systems, and making a final decision isn’t easy. To be honest, one reason I chose MacPorts is that I couldn’t get past the cutesy, unintuitive terminology of Homebrew (cellar, bottles, taps, etc). I dimly remember getting into some trouble with versions of some programs delivered with OSX that didn’t work well with Homebrew, which is, at least, less likely with MacPorts. Like OP, I also disliked the ruthless automatic updating of Homebrew, and I wasn’t smart enough to find the fix posted by @cornchip.

22

As I said above, if you’re installing with MacPorts, the installer/program will be running as root, and can do as it pleases. Most software installed with Homebrew runs as a user, and at least has some restrictions.

23

If I was looking to distribute malware on the Mac, I wouldn’t be looking at Unix-y tools used by a (relatively small) handful of nerds. I’d make a GUI .pkg with a preinstall script that will do whatever nefarious things I want to do, knowing that most users will just click ‘OK’ when presented with a dialogue box.

Which is why I have Suspicious Package as the default app to open .pkg files on all my Macs.

1 Like
24

In addition to nefarious, there are also incompetent developers.

Anywho, whatever floats ones boat.

25

Thanks @tjluoma I have both installed and so far only use Brew.sh for my day to day operations. MacPorts sounds like a stable alternative, I will be in the lookout for it and start some small experiments with it, thanks.