Since OSX dosn't have a native package management solution, installing some opensource software can be greatly simplified by using MacPorts, which fills this void.

Case in point, although there is a great installer for getting Git up and running on OSX, when I wanted to add git-svn functionality, I had to use another installation method, MacPorts fit the bill perfeclty

The requirements for installing MacPorts do include having a recent version of XCode, but otherwise it is rather straight forward.

• Download .dmg from MacPorts Site
• Run sudo port -v selfupdate, (should be done regularly)
• start using macports!

As an example, here is how I replaced the git-osx-installer version of git, with macports' getting svn and bash_completion support:

# remove git-osx-installer version of git first.
sudo rm -rf /usr/local/git /etc/paths.d/git /etc/manpaths.d/git

# install git, git-svn with MacPorts
sudo port install git-core +bash_completion +doc +svn

Wait a while, this pull in a lot of dependancies, like perl, ncurses,.... ---> Dependencies to be installed: bash-completion curl curl-ca-bundle perl5 perl5.12 libidn gettext expat libiconv gperf ncurses ncursesw openssl zlib pkgconfig p5-error p5-libwww-perl p5-compress-raw-zlib p5-crypt-ssleay p5-mime-base64 p5-html-parser p5-html-tagset p5-io-compress p5-compress-raw-bzip2 p5-uri p5-svn-simple subversion-perlbindings apr apr-util db46 sqlite3 readline cyrus-sasl2 neon serf subversion p5-term-readkey python27 bzip2 gdbm python_select rsync popt

I then replaced this section in my .profile

# excerpt from my ~/.profile
# git bash prompt
PS1='\h:\W$(__git_ps1 "(%s)") \u\$ '
# MacPorts Bash shell command completion
if [ -f /opt/local/etc/bash_completion ]; then
    . /opt/local/etc/bash_completion
fi

Just for fun, solve this longstanding irritant:

sudo port install wget

Last thought: That was pretty easy! Must remember to run sudo port -v selfupdate frequently.