Although I did not see an official press release, I noticed when running sudo port selfupdate earlier this evening, that much to my surprise I was greeted with the following;
MacPorts base version 1.600 installed
Downloaded MacPorts base version 1.700
Configuring, Building and Installing new MacPorts base
selfupdate done!
For those of you who a unfamiliar with the MacPorts, it is a way of installing numerous UNIX/Linux applications on your Mac by compiling source code and/or installing packages. The source compiling method is akin to the system used by FreeBSD‘s Ports. These port systems simplyfy the sometime audurous tasks of downloading, compiling and installing open-source software. In general the ports system will handle all dependency requirements for a desired port, by branching off and building missing dependencies as required, then returning to the original port to continue the compilation.
Currently there are over 5400 ports available in the MacPorts tree.