Question

I am trying to download the source code for wget in Mac.

I managed to get the source code of wget in Ubuntu by

apt-get source wget 

However, I have not managed to download source codes in Mac’s terminal. I did not find the same utility in MacPorts.

Answer 1

MacPorts is a source-based package manager. That means that each time you install a package via MacPorts, it downloads the source, potentially patches it, configures it, builds it, installs it to a temporary location (so it can track which files the port needs), makes an archive of it, then installs that archive into the MacPorts root, which is usually /opt/local.

If you want to look at or edit the source before building it, you can execute a subset of the steps necessary to download and install it. port extract <name> will download and extract the source for the port, without actually building or installing it. You can then find the extracted source with port dir <portname>:

$ sudo port -v extract zlib Password: --->  Fetching zlib --->  Verifying checksum(s) for zlib --->  Checksumming zlib-1.2.3.tar.bz2 --->  Extracting zlib --->  Extracting zlib-1.2.3.tar.bz2 $ ls $(port dir zlib) Portfile    files       work $ ls $(port dir zlib)/work zlib-1.2.3 $ ls $(port dir zlib)/work/zlib-1.2.3 ChangeLog   as400       examples    inftrees.h  uncompr.c FAQ     compress.c  gzio.c      make_vms.com    win32 INDEX       configure   infback.c   minigzip.c  zconf.h Makefile    contrib     inffast.c   msdos       zconf.in.h Makefile.in crc32.c     inffast.h   old     zlib.3 README      crc32.h     inffixed.h  projects    zlib.h adler32.c   deflate.c   inflate.c   qnx     zutil.c algorithm.txt   deflate.h   inflate.h   trees.c     zutil.h amiga       example.c   inftrees.c  trees.h 

See the MacPorts guide for more information on developing ports, and also man port.