Re: PCRE library requirement

[Richard Campbell]

We had ongoing problems with portability that we eventually traced to the fact 
that two of my coworkers had multiple versions of gcc, gfortran, libstdc++, etc 
on their machines. The ones from Fink and Macports all had newer version 
numbers than the Apple variants but didn't support features like universal 
binary construction. And depending on what user you were logged in as, a 
different compiler would run when you typed 'gcc' on the same machine. 
Additionally we had one machine where the presence of non universal binary 
libstdc++ caused any third party OSX .app bundle which had been compiled as 
32-bit with c++ to not run.

When we got rid of Fink and Macports all of a sudden we could run the same code 
with the same build process in all our OSX, Linux, and MinGW target 
environments.

If the package managers don't install their own compilers then they're probably 
fine. I just don't see how the benefits outweigh the potential headaches, given 
that most projects build from source on OSX easily without needing to be 
'ported'.

But then again, before I ever used a Mac, I was on Slackware and I built 
everything from source there too.

Campbell

On Feb 1, 2011, at 4:03, Jarno Rajahalme <address@hidden> wrote:

> 
> On Feb 1, 2011, at 0:10 , ext Richard Campbell wrote:
>> I am aware of Macports and Fink, third party package managers and 'port' 
>> systems that have a truly horrifying effect on the operating system.
> 
> Could you please enlighten me a bit? I've been happy using macports on my 
> system, and have not noticed any problems at all. Also, I like the fact that 
> I can update the packages with a single command. So what exactly are these 
> "truly horrifying effects"?
> 
>  Jarno
>