I used to use homebrew, but before that I used MacPorts. (And long, long, before that, fink.) The past year or two I’ve come back to MacPorts. But I forget what the commands are. (Honestly, I get them confused with apt, but that’s a separate problem.)

The usual thing to do is to search and then install:

• port search whatever
• port info whatever
• port variants whatever
• port install whatever +somevariant

The other thing is to update the stuff you’ve already installed

• port -d selfupdate
• port list outdated
• port upgrade outdated

And sometimes get rid of the old stuff

• port list inactive
• port uninstall inactive

Update: I left out two important commands:

• port list installed # what got installed
• port list leaves # what you installed