title: What are the pros and cons of building from source versus installing from a Disk Image on OS X?
body: <p>What are the pros and cons of installing things like <a href="http://python.org/download/" rel="nofollow">Python</a> and <a href="http://git-scm.com/download" rel="nofollow">Git</a> from source instead of simply using the community provided Disk Image on OS X?</p>
  
  <p>Dan Benjamin has an article about <a href="http://hivelogic.com/articles/using_usr_local" rel="nofollow">"Using /usr/local"</a>. However, given that the <a href="http://git-scm.com/download" rel="nofollow">Git</a> DMG installs into <code>/usr/local/git</code> and the <a href="http://python.org/download/" rel="nofollow">Python</a> DMG installs as a Framework, I'm not sure that the advantages Dan lists for building from source aren't still gained via a DMG install in these cases.</p>
  
  <p>Obviously, one pro of using a Disk Image is that it's much simpler. However, are they tradeoffs that make it worth building from source?</p>