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this is #1 what drives me nuts about macports:

    $ port deps clojure-contrib
    Full Name: clojure-contrib @1.1.0
    Build Dependencies:   clojure
    Fetch Dependencies:   git-core
    $ port deps git-core
    Full Name: git-core @1.7.0.2+doc
    Runtime Dependencies: rsync, perl5, p5-error
    Library Dependencies: curl, zlib, openssl, expat, libiconv
with no possibility of skipping dependencies


Why don't you just edit the port to add a variant that lets you opt-out of those dependencies?

Poor package management isn't the fault of MacPorts; a Homebrew port could be just as poorly designed.

The "variants" infrastructure of MacPorts is one of my favorite parts of MacPorts, it definitely makes it easier to manage interdependencies IMHO.


Truth. Anyone capable of maintaining a homebrew setup has Sufficient skills to spend five minutes scanning the macports guide and tweaking the port files. OTOH, building clojure is te leas of the parents problems; he is in for anworld of painful surprise when he sees how screwed up packaging is. Have a clojure app? Include your own copy of clojure and clojure-contrib. Have a clojure editing mode? Do the same. Have a blog entry that mentions clojure? I think you need to download and squirrel away the jar files in those cases as well...

I ended up creating my own branch of the port tree for clojure bits just because of all the patching needed to avoid this "let me grab a copy of clojure for you" behavior.


Indeed. After looking at various package/dep schemes for clojure, I just gave up and created my own application and library templates and copy files around - at least the jar files are small enough that it doesn't really matter.




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