Nix is sort of that third option, though I really wish there was a well-documented way to use it on macOS as purely a binary/source package manager. A lot of stuff I read online goes into setting up nix-darwin to manage desktop settings and etc. and I just don't need or want that.

That being said, if you haven't used MacPorts in years, I'd say it's worth the jump. I recall moving from MacPorts in the first place because Homebrew was faster and allowed for customising packages.

When I switched back to MacPorts again, it was because Homebrew had become slow and no longer allowed package customisation. Now, MacPorts is much faster and has the variants system for package customisation.

Thank you for this helpful information. It might be worth a try. I initially moved to brew because it was "new", because I liked the command line interface, and because it seemed more "segregated" from the rest of the OS's files (/usr/local/Cellar and so on). But it's increasingly aggressive messages reminding me I am a second-class (or third-class) citizen due to the age of my OS is really off-putting.

I actually migrated from Homebrew to Macports after ending up in dependency hell in Homebrew with Postgresql + Postgis, and not being able to fix this properly even with my own brew recipes.

So for now that works a lot better in Macports. The portfile stuff needed some digging to understand, but that's doable.

Not sure what made you move from Macports to Homebrew. (Should I worry?)

"Homebrew's insistence on leaving OSes behind that they deem to be "too old" is becoming a problem as the years click by"

Indeed! I have a VERY usable Macbook Pro from 2015. Even with the newest version supported macOS version (11) Big Sur (which is still quite modern) it doesn't have any binaries for apps, which means it has to compile every single app and dependency.

I managed to update to macOS 14 (with the help of OpenCore Legacy Patcher).

But this just buys me one year to use Homebrew. Next year they will retire macOS 14.

And my machine is still very usable, but it will become junk from a developer perspective unless I have homebrew (or something similar).

It annoys me because I think this problem is fixable. Either community repos or more donations to homebrew to compile apps for older macs.

It's too bad that homebrew adopted the "Apple Attitude" around dealing with legacy OS versions. I don't recall ever seeing a message while working in Linux saying "Oh, you're using an OLD version of Linux, that's unsupported! You're a Tier-3 Loser and we don't guarantee this is going to work!"

Even developer tools on Windows tend to be fairly graceful about you running Windows 7 or whatever.

Somehow Apple and their entire ecosystem has adopted this "Latest Version Or GTFO" attitude towards users and developers.

I went through the same experience with an old macbook. Switching to macports solved that problem.

How much are you willing to donate before concluding it's more efficient to just buy a new MacBook? Even the cheapest models now are faster, more energy efficient and more secure. You don't have to throw the old one away if you can find a use case for running old software but I don't think there are many people running 'power user / developer' like tasks on old hardware, especially if their jobs depend on it.

> I'd like to see a third option

Nix, perhaps?

Also Pkgsrc

if you're good with tools that don't support global installs there are also Spack, Mise, and pkgx

none of those are quite suitable for managing macOS app bundles, though.

Make Fink modern. ;)

(Part /s, part not)

Honestly conda does a lot of heavy lifting for me. I know people have strong feelings about it on here but it works great for my purposes.