Fellow Mac user here... Have you tried homebrew? I had been using MacPorts until someone told me "Homebrew is far faster." And indeed, installing something on MP takes me ages, while on homebrew it's a matter of seconds

Homebrew may be faster because it uses Apple-provided libraries. MacPorts builds its own libs. Why?

Apple has a habit of not updating the libraries in Mac OS X until absolutely necessitated by a security vulnerability.

https://trac.macports.org/wiki/FAQ#ownlibs

One other reason I use MacPorts is because I didn't like the idea of HB changing permissions of /usr/local:

http://superuser.com/a/371976

HB may have changed this in the last couple years but I haven't bothered looking over the fence: MP has been near bulletproof for me, and has provided nearly everything relevant that I've needed.

fwiw I've been running homebrew out of my ~ folder without any problems, because I'm not a fan of that default either. But yeah, use what works :)

I really like that aspect of homebrew. I don't let anything else use /usr/local, and it means I can install things without using sudo, so no risk they are messing something up elsewhere in system directories.

But you risk the installation messing with your data and home directory. MacPorts uses sudo because it drops privileges to a specific 'macports' user for the build process and applies sandboxing. Therefore, the execution of Makefile rules and other build scripts cannot harm your data.

Ah, thanks, I didn't know that. That does sound better.

Slightly off-topic, but is there a particular reason you prefer MacPorts to Homebrew?

Let's do it the other way: I've used MacPorts since 2006 without a single issue, what problems will I be able to fix by switching to Homebrew?

I remember when I upgraded to Lion everything got messed up. I had to spend a whole day mucking about trying to fix thing. I remember the only solution was to get a list of everything installed, uninstall everything, reinstall the latest version of MacPorts and then reinstall all the original packages.

Migration is still required to reinstall ports as the underlying system libraries change on a major version upgrade of Mac OS X.

However, situation still improved a lot since then. If the licensing of the port and all dependencies allow it, MacPorts now even offers pre-compiled binary archives for Snow Leopard, Lion and Mountain Lion. Often you do not even have to compile software yourself anymore.

I use macports because it has better support for multiple version of python installed in parallel.