> Any idea why the Mac crowd seems to shun binary packages?
4 different architectures (PPC/32b, PPC/64, Intel/32 and Intel/64) are probably hell on a binary-only package manager. Source-only is simpler and lighter on the architecture side, though it's much heavier on the client one.
the openbsd project builds 1700 to 5600 binary packages for each of 12 architectures on a weekly/monthly basis and continuously mirrors them throughout dozens of ftp sites. building a few dozen or even a few hundred packages for 4 architectures isn't that hard, it's just a matter of resources. someone has to have 4 of those machines sitting around doing nothing but building packages, uploading them somewhere, and then take the time to fix ports and dependencies that don't build on certain architectures.
fwiw, i use fink on mac os and it supports binary packages. many of the ports in its stable branch are available as binary packages.
4 different architectures (PPC/32b, PPC/64, Intel/32 and Intel/64) are probably hell on a binary-only package manager. Source-only is simpler and lighter on the architecture side, though it's much heavier on the client one.
Fink does binary packages though, I think.