FWIW, Homebrew uses /opt/homebrew instead of /usr/local on Apple Silicon installations, as far as I know that was the main sticking point for the complaint that it took over your system. Still isn’t terribly useful for multi-user systems as far as I know, but for my personal laptop this will never be a problem that I have to deal with.
I used pkgsrc on macOS for a while but ended up going back to Homebrew because it was easier and there were more packages relevant to my needs; I also found packages in pkgsrc wouldn’t play nicely with zsh or bash completion sometimes, I believe this was related to patches specifically required for macOS for these packages. The concept of casks is also very nice, as it means I can manage most packages using a single package manager instead of doing dmg->drag-n-drop installations or mucking around with install/uninstall scripts. Building and maintaining a dumb cask formula is also pretty easy for apps where there isn’t already an available cask.
I haven’t used Macports so couldn’t compare - can Macports install .app applications?
I used pkgsrc on macOS for a while but ended up going back to Homebrew because it was easier and there were more packages relevant to my needs; I also found packages in pkgsrc wouldn’t play nicely with zsh or bash completion sometimes, I believe this was related to patches specifically required for macOS for these packages. The concept of casks is also very nice, as it means I can manage most packages using a single package manager instead of doing dmg->drag-n-drop installations or mucking around with install/uninstall scripts. Building and maintaining a dumb cask formula is also pretty easy for apps where there isn’t already an available cask.
I haven’t used Macports so couldn’t compare - can Macports install .app applications?