# MacPorts

55 Hacker News commenters recommended MacPorts and 9 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 10 years (4 owners). It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** People recommend MacPorts as a macOS package manager with a large package collection, installs kept out of the way in /opt, and support for very old Macs. Critics say it compiles from source, can break system setups, and is slower than Homebrew.

## Why people recommend it

- Large package collection (3 comments): "features an actual .pkg installer, as well as doing pretty much everything else better, and having more packages, and existing first" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46945204)) "which currently supports all the way back to Leopard, has far more packages than Homebrew, has a better design" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46945169)) "It has a ton of packages, and the maintainers are very responsive to requests and bug reports" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50013294))
- Supports very old macOS versions (7 comments): "MacPorts generally doesn't care what version of macOS you run, so here I am. I'll probably never go back to Homebrew. MP is great!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49684551)) "It was the original package manager, still going strong, and it supports Macs going all the way back to the Leopard era." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49690216)) "which currently supports all the way back to Leopard, has far more packages than Homebrew, has a better design" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46945169))
- Installs cleanly away from system (3 comments): "it's tidy, installs into /opt/macports, works with Apple's frameworks and language configuration" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46495759)) "Installs itself properly out of the way in /opt. Works with the Apple frameworks (eg Python)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47347316)) "macports installs the packages into a separate prefix, and you just add that to the path" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49689530))
- Better design than Homebrew (5 comments): "features an actual .pkg installer, as well as doing pretty much everything else better, and having more packages, and existing first" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46945204)) "which currently supports all the way back to Leopard, has far more packages than Homebrew, has a better design" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46945169)) "I use MacPorts because of older versions of Homebrew having a weird and insecure design." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46941132))

## What people warn about

- Compiles software, slow installs (2 comments): "Apart from the issue of having to compile the downloaded software leading to spinning fans, I'm not too concerned." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49684077)) "I always found it much slower when compared to brew" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49694679))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Nix](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nix.md): 378 recommend
- [Homebrew](https://hackerapproved.com/p/homebrew.md): 271 recommend
- [npm](https://hackerapproved.com/p/npm.md): 161 recommend
- [pnpm](https://hackerapproved.com/p/pnpm.md): 124 recommend
- [Cargo](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cargo.md): 123 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "MacPorts", https://hackerapproved.com/p/macports/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).