Perhaps it is just that I'm getting older, but I've resisted using package managers on Linux and Mac OS X for some time. I dunno, I guess I preferred to download the source and build it myself. What a sucker I am for punishment!
I think that I had a similar resistance to Apache Maven originally - I just didn't want the learning curve of a new tool.
I'd got to the point with a C++ project that I was fed up managing, building and sorting out the dependencies of various C/C++ based libraries. The catalyst for me was when I started using Cairo, a 2D vector and imaging library (which is great!). Cairo had many dependencies and the project recommended a number of package managers for my OS X build environment.
I ended up with MacPorts and haven't looked back. Managing those dependencies just got a whole lot easier. MacPorts was apparently started by a group of Apple engineers and it grew from there. At the time of writing there are now over 6,000 packages available through MacPorts.
MacPorts likes to put everything in /opt by default. For some bizarre reason I was against using /opt as my root folder for all MacPorts derived packages - talk about resisting change for no good reason! However I got over that and must take a leaf out here and try to resist such time consuming temptations. Who really cares where MacPorts puts stuff so long as at the end of the day your dependencies are being managed and your applications build?
The only thing I found myself changing with the default configuration was the /opt/local/etc/macports/variants.conf file. I wanted +universal as a default. My projects tend to build both 32 bit and 64 bit targets and so I needed MacPorts to do this by default (I kept forgetting to specify the variant on the command line).
All good. MacPorts is great and is another tool that helps me focus on the problem at hand.
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