Here we will use Homebrew as my package manager for Unix utilities on OSX. Homebrew seems to install less dependencies than Macports or Fink.
Also, most of my Python development has settled on Python 2.7 and occasionally Python 3 for tasks that don’t require external libraries that only run on Python 2.x. So for me, an easier install with less gunk on my hard drive is a fair trade for losing the latest updates to Python 2.4, 2.5, and 2.6.
In this post, I’ll describe my setup.
The first thing to do is uninstall Macports if present. Homebrew has fairly up-to-date versions all of the Unix packages I use on a daily basis, including git, subversion, bash_completion, Python, Qt, PyQt, and their supporting libraries. As such, I don’t need Macports taking up additional hard drive space and potentially causing conflicts with Homebrew’s packages.