Git and SVN on OSX 10.8 - is this the best way?

Don't get me started on Apple. I bought my first Mac a few weeks ago, and I'm still trying to figure out why. They are pretty, but they are also pretty frustrating. Other than the hardware compatability problems with Linux, which may actually have driven me crazy, Ubuntu is a much better-designed system.

For one thing, Apple seems determined to gradually eliminate standard UNIX software from this platform. Which kind of defeats the whole point I bought the thing -- I wanted a reliable UNIX-based system. I realize that Apple could not give a toss about UNIX geeks, having a very lucrative mass market of schmucks to serve, but still that doesn't console me much. One day I will post a long list of frustrations I have found since starting with OSX.

Today I just want to post how I got something working, in case I need it later. In Ubuntu, if I want to use Git and SVN, I have to type something like this:

sudo apt-get install subversion
sudo apt-get install git-core

Something like that. Also maybe

sudo apt-get install git-svn

I don't remember. Actually, I don't have to remember, or type it, because bash on Ubuntu has completions. There's nothing to it.

In OSX, there is no standard package management system. (Let alone bash completions.) There are a variety of independent efforts (Mac Ports, Homebrew, Fink), and they all hate each other. You pick one of those and hope for the best.

Except Apple keeps trying to break them.

The worst thing I have done with OSX so far is upgrading to 10.8. This was a stupid mistake, because 10.8 does not contain any useful features, but instead breaks things that I had come to depend on. I did it because I thought it was supposed to fix fullscreen mode with multiple monitors, which was already broken. It is still broken.

Prior to 10.8 I was able to get Git and SVN working using Homebrew. After 10.8 I get compilation errors.

So instead I installed SVN using the brain-dead Windows method of click-till-you-die installation from a binary DMG file from git-scm.com. And I installed Git similarly by clicking and clicking and clicking with a binary PKG file from WANDisco. This was fine, for independent Git and SVN operation. But Git-SVN did not work. I got

Can't locate SVN/Core.pm in @INC

because the Git Perl code is in one place, and the SVN Perl code is somewhere completely different.

Only the wise and benevolent creator can tell why these things need to talk to each other using Perl. It probably comes from Git being implemented using every UNIX hack tool under the sun.

I got them to work, apparently, by doing this:

sudo ln -s /opt/subversion/lib/svn-perl/auto /usr/local/git/lib/perl5/site_perl/auto
sudo ln -s /opt/subversion/lib/svn-perl/SVN /usr/local/git/lib/perl5/site_perl/SVN

What a hack! And only works because there was no auto/ directory there already! This is gonna break, I know it! Hopefully the Homebrew version will be working again by then.

Give me Ubuntu for this sort of thing any day. Shit, even give me an RPM-based system, I'll be happy with that.