When comparing pkgsrc vs Postman, the Slant community recommends Postman for most people. In the question“What are the best developer tools for Mac OSX?” Postman is ranked 14th while pkgsrc is ranked 28th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro pkgin is an apt-like tools for installing binaries from pkgsrc
pkgin aims to be a tool similar to apt/yum for managing pkgsrc binaries by relying on pkg_summary for installing, removing and upgrading packages and dependencies, using a remote repo.
Pro Adapted for use on over a dozen different operating systems
Has been adopted to be used on several Unix-like operating systems and Windows. It's also the default package manager of DragonflyBSD and of the (now discounted) Bluewall Linux distro.
Pro Installs and works in the same way as MacPorts
Installs its own dependencies which means that it is very secure. Cannot install anything unless you use the "sudo" command which is in keeping with the Unix philosophy.
Pro Both binary packages and source build possible
Fast software installation is possible by using binary packages. It's also easy to build from source which allows for different compile-time options (like different UI backends) as well as gaining access to pre-release versions of software in certain cases.
Pro Offering tooling for backporting fixes
Backporting fixes can be done by cherry-picking updates from a newer branch (pkgsrc is released every 3 months) and creating a package. Sometimes bugs need to be fixed for production and there is neither a fix in newer pkgsrc nor the softwares upstream. So pkgsrc has tools like pkgdiff, mkpatches, etc. that help with developing patches and building binary packages from that. A bit of documentation about that process can be found here.
Pro Does not need Xcode command line tools or Xcode.
This means that you can install it fresh on a new installation of MacOS and have all your favorite apps installed right from the start.
Pro Works easily with Ansible
Can be used from within Ansible to install packages on macOS.
Pro Easy installation if you use 3rd party scripts
This one works brilliantly.
Pro Free
Pro Flexible and powerful
Can easily add/remove parameters, headers, tests and more. Displays all the info you would want in a partitioned way so you can track exactly what you want. Able to save request and run them in bulk for testing real-user scenarios very efficiently.
Pro Clear interface
The interface of the program is clean and intuitive. Almost all features are accessible through a single click.
Pro Two versions of apps are available
Packaged app and an in-browser app are available for Google Chrome.
Pro Excellent user feedback loop
Postman is very responsive to users and listens to user feedback.
Pro Dark theme
Cons
Con Relatively complicated setup and installation
Installing and setting pkgsrc up is a bit more complicated than in other package managers where it often consists in running a single script.
Con Not so broadly used on MacOS as compared with MacPorts
You do not hear about Pkgsrc as openly as you hear the words "HomeBrew" or "MacPorts".
Con Outdated packages
Some packages are outdated.
Con Can't install some packages
Even building well known packages (except MacPorts) from source using the ports can fail.
Con Version 8.x killed Postman - some problem related to "Teams"
Postman is forcing everybody to move their data to the cloud.
Con Insecure off-premise storage
To properly use this with full development and testing it stores API details, including security, in an off-site storage managed by Postman. It also stores details about employees, teams they are members of, and projects they are working on.
This makes it inappropriate for any organization that is required to exercise a high level of security hygiene when developing software products. This issue may be compounded by the lack of details concerning the geolocation of data storage.
Con Proprietary, closed source software
Not free and open source.
Con Resource hog
Con Bloated & cluttered
Bloated and cluttered, it's quicker to just have a js/ts template available to run some requests.
Con Limited free APIs
Con Doesn't work right with localized queries
Con Does not support Proxy authentication
