zsh vs MacPorts

When you start typing a command, you can press the tab key and it will complete the command you started typing. If there are multiple potential commands, you can choose which one to run by simply pressing tab again. Case-insensitive by default, too.

Oh-my-zsh is a community-driven framework, which helps users with their zsh configuration and plugins. 400 plugins, 200+ themes and auto-updates to always be up to date.

Zsh intelligently determines if you are trying to complete a file path or an option, and pressing tab after typing - will reliably bring up a list of options.

Things you've learned using bash will largely apply to zsh. Scripts written in bash will run with little to no modification.

Unlike Bash, zsh does not split unquoted variables by default, making it less error-prone.

ls **/*.log for example is supported by ZSH.

Zsh will take you through a procedure which is roughly 30 minutes in length before during install. Through this procedure it asks you to set different options and customize the shell the way you want it to. Most of these settings are also found in other shells, but to customize them you have to go dig configuration files while zsh allows you to do it in the beginning.

If you spend a lot of time in the terminal, most likely you will have several terminal windows open. Zsh has great support for command line histories. The history is unique and shared through all the different instances.

Zsh can determine the context of the command you're typing in and determine if it should escape characters if you're typing in a URI.

Some programs don't support loading from stdin, but ZSH can store outputs to a temporary file, example: unzip =(curl http://example.com/someZipFile.zip)

Zsh' s correct (or correctall) is vastly superior to Bash's attempt at spelling correction.

MacPorts eschews Apple-supplied libraries and links sources against its own making sure that the experience is the same regardless of what OS X version is used.

Detailed instructions on the homepage are easy to follow. Official GUI app is also available

MacPorts generally gets new software soon after it's available. This way users will not have to worry if their software is up to date.

MacPorts has a variants system that allows customizing builds with author provided options.

As of this writing, 20K packages. 3 to 5x more than other current package managers.

No need to worry if some rogue app will change your binaries or configuration.

Considering just how often Apple breaks things, any reduplication of of Apple-supplied libraries with the canonical sources is an asset.

Written in Tcl & C, it's generally significantly faster than the competition. Tcl is also quite readable and comparable to Ruby, so it's also friendly to newcomers.

Homebrew dropped support for old Macs. MacPorts still supports them.

No need to install Ruby, or any other programming language.

With Apple moving over to its own silicon, macports has been ready for the move to ARM since 2.6.4

Reading the story behind MacPorts, it is the only one that was developed by Apple by an Apple employee. In fact it is the same person that was responsible for creating the FreeBSD port system.

For example, trying to install Finch using Pkgsrc doesn't work, while installing it using MacPorts works perfectly. Finch isn't even on Homebrew's radar.