I have installed GIMP using both macports and the dmg file provided on the GIMP website but the macports install runs with XQuartz X11 while the dmg seems to be a more native app. Do we know why macports uses this approach? Maybe something with licensing and building the code but it comes off as having some overhead and being less than optimal so why use it in the first place for this particular software?
Back in the early OS X era(10.1-10.8) you had to use X11/XQuartz X11 mostly due to certain “weird” UI rendering issues that would occur with GIMP OS X specific build. While the gap has closed with fewer UI specific issues with GIMP, almost most Unix/Linux opensource developed software tends to have a less than perfect window management/UI rendering when ported–if you run Unix software on a Mac, chances are you already have X11 installed. (Scribus is one of the few which has a perfect Mac version)
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Because people who use macports don’t actually give a shit?
As I understand it, the macports version is a fork, so I imagine thus far it’s been too much work to merge the new UI back in to the macports version. Just speculating but I do recall them being different beyond UI, maybe it was RAW processing