[Pythonmac-SIG] fink vs DarwinPorts?

[Russell E. Owen]

I've seen a lot of discussion lately about fink and darwinports and I'm 
wondering if folks who have experience with either can comment on their 
relative merits?

I've been building everything from source and am getting a bit tired of 
it. Many of the packages have some painful gotcha that has to be worked 
out (and some I've never worked out, such as installing snack for my 
unix/x11 tcl/tk + python).

I installed and deleted fink a few times years ago, each time giving up 
in frustration because the stuff in the "stable" area was so outdated. I 
now realize if I want to use fink I have to be prepared to use the 
"unstable" packages.

DarwinPorts seems to have fewer packages (for example no scipy). On the 
other hand, it has more current released stuff.

There are some advantages to doing it myself (despite the pain):
- If a package I want isn't available any other way, I'm more likely to 
be able to build it myself if I've built everything else myself. Because 
I'll have a lot of the standard prerequisites already built and because 
I'll have some experience.
- (Also, does using binaries means I'm less likely to get code optimized 
for my system?)

I hope this doesn't start a flame war, but I would be very interested in 
any insights people have as to the relative merits of the various 
systems.

Regards,

-- Russell