<i>Explain to me a pain point of Macports that Homebrew solves</i><p>It doesn't require you to install a second, shadow Perl, Python or Ruby in order to install other packages. Instead Homebrew uses the Perl, Python and Ruby that OSX already provides. (This may be a con, depending on what you think of Apple's treatment of those packages. I grant that.)<p>I found the Python issue to be a particular pain in the ass, since MacPorts's Python build requires tk, which requires some GUI libraries, which ends up building more or less an entire X11 sub-system on OSX <i>that I will never ever use</i>.<p>I ran into this when trying to install Getmail. My solution then was simply to download Getmail and install it the old-fashioned way. I was a little surprised that Getmail built so easily using the system's built-in Python. My first thought was, "If I can do it that easily, using what I already have, why does MacPorts force me to download and build all this other crap?"<p>What annoys me about MacPorts (which I love in many ways, don't get me wrong) is that it is not easy to customize builds. You can edit the portfile easily enough, but every update undoes that.