Portage vs. apt-get vs. Ports

[Arcanum]

Something I've been trying to find off-and-on for a while is a direct feature comparison between Portage, apt-get, and the BSD Ports systems. I already have both a server and a laptop running Gentoo, and I absolutely love it, but I regularly get people asking me about specific feature comparisons.

Can anyone familiar with all three (or even two of the three) give a side-by-side comparison? Or a link to where someone else has does the comparison? Thanks!

[kamagurka]

i have no idea what ports are like, but i do know this:
the major difference between emerge and apt-get is that emerge is sourcebased, while apt-get fetches precompiled binaries. this means that you lose the compile optimization (that debianites claim is near to unnoticeable anyway) and it doesnt take 8 hours to install freaking mozilla.

i personally dont mind the compile time as it doesnt leave the computer unusable or anything, and even if the optimization isnt good for anything i somehow take pleasure in the idea that everything i run on this system was basically a textfile when it entered my harddrive =).
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If you loved me, you'd all kill yourselves today.
--Spider Jerusalem, the Word

[sapphirecat]

The difference between Portage and Ports (FreeBSD 4.x; I understand they've done some enhancements in 5.x, at the very least making downloading resumable)...

Portage:
* Written in Python
* USE flags allow for consistent and more comprehensive feature in/exclusion
* Has stable and unstable branches (~arch keyword)
* Has the SLOT keyword, so gtk1 and gtk2 can be the same package (gtk+) but both major versions installed side-by-side from it.
* Not release-oriented; the ability for constant upgrades of the portage tree was designed in

Ports:
* Written the UNIX Way(TM), with straight Makefiles, and doesn't depend on Python
* Very release-oriented; upgrading ports basically requires the portupgrade port or a full reinstall (the base system is different)
* Has a mature binary package system, where binary packages can be fetched and installed rather than the source
* Stores reverse dependencies, so for instance removing the last package depending on package X can also remove X. (Portage simulates this with depclean, but it just isn't the same. The world file has to be kept pretty clean for that, and it's still somewhat dangerous.)
* /usr/ports is much friendlier to tab-completion
* Some ports feature simple switches like "make -DWITHOUT_GNOME install" but these are largely invisible without reading the Makefile

I also noticed when I copied distfiles around that the ports tended to fetch gz, and portage tends toward bz2. I'm not sure if this is still true, though.
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Former Gentoo user; switched to Kubuntu 7.04 when I got sick of waiting on gcc. Chance of thread necro if you reply now approaching 100%...

[paneb]

both types of archives are fetched dependind on the way src is distributes
(shitty post compared to yours lol )

[Arcanum]

Thanks for the info! Now I've got something to point to when people ask for the differences between the systems.