MacPorts - does it work?

I've just installed Emacs using MacPorts, but it turned out to be the Ncurses/terminal version. I tried emacs-app, which I think is the X11/GUI version, and it failed to build. I then tried GEdit, which took hours and then gave a screenful of errors.

Anyone else used it with any success? MacPorts seems to be a variation of the FreeBSD Ports system - but that does actually work.

I've used it for several things - of course, I don't just use MacPorts - I use the gui front end Porticus to do my installs, and what I've installed has installed just fine... For many/most things you need to make sure you have XCode installed tho AFAIK so whatever is downloaded can be properly compiled if required.

Works about 95% of the time here for me.

As for emacs, give Aquamacs a try. For gedit, there are native Mac builds - get it here (look for the link on the right hand side).

It works most of the time for me. As stated before I have xcode and x11 installed.

I just tried installing xemacs and it seems to work. I had to turn off universal though

Maybe I was just unlucky, or it was user error from a Mac novice.

vansmith said:

As for emacs, give Aquamacs a try.

Click to expand...

That's a top tip, thanks for that.