Installing a linux application in OS X - source or via package mechanism? I'm looking at installing an application whose installation is supported on a few Linux distros via yum, rpm etc and from source. What I would like to know is given these possibilities, what would be the best way to install it on OS X? I'm only vaguely aware of Brew, Fink &amp; pkgsrc. I only have beginner experience with package managers too. What I don't understand is once you install some variety of package manager, does the application have to have been "packaged" with one of those for it to be installable or, does it just use the package framework and (maybe) existing system libraries to produce what it needs on OS X with whatever package sources are available from the vendor?

It seems even with a source installation some form of package manager is needed given they list various library requirements as being met via issuing:

yum install cmake gcc gcc-c++ libaio libaio-devel automake autoconf bison libtool ncurses-devel libgcrypt-devel libev-devel


(There is also an apt-get equivalent provided as well).
Also - is it best to have a solution that leverages the installed system base libraries or provides its own copies? Would darwinup be a possibility for a source installation?
To answer some of your questions (there are a lot!) 
Not all programs written for Linux will install on OSX nor will they necessarily even compile from source. 
What"genre" of programs are you looking for? Things with a GUI, or command line programs or scientific?
In general I would recommend usingbrew first, and seeing if you can find the program you want there. Fink and MacPorts, etc, have become far more problematic.