Fink - 0.9.0

After I installed this package, the only documentation I saw (which seems to be the only thing this package contains) was about "how to install it". Found a "Usage" doc, and that was about "how to install/update" this software, too. No docs on how to actually use this thing!!! Now all I need is find out how to uninstall this unusable piece...!

I maintain a few specialized packages, but am writing (and rating) from the point of view of a user.

Fink - 0.8.1 has just been released. There are two installers. One is for intel. The other is for ppc, providing a new branch (10.4, rather than 10.4-transitional). These new branches of fink both use g++ rather than g++3.3, so the safest upgrade option is probably to move /sw out of the way and to start anew. The fink Quick Start page offers more explicit instructions, and also a conversion tool (which I have not tried) that might permit you to keep your current installation while migrating to the new branch.

I've been using the 10.4 branch on intel and on ppc and have tested it extensively in the last couple of months. It seems to be working very well, and the few minor glitches I found were fixed very quickly.

I've been using fink since OS X 10.1, and find it absolutely indispensable. More than any other thing, this has helped to make OS X a viable unix computational platform for scientific computing in my laboratory. This is due in no small part to the dedicated volunteer efforts of many extremely talented, generous and hard-working individuals.

FYI, DarwinPorts 1.0 was just released. DarwinPorts and Fink compliment each other nicely, and I don't think it's an either/or situation. Fink has many more available packages, a good graphical interface via FinkCommander, and the ease of binary installation via Debian's apt-get, whereas DarwinPorts has much more flexibility and many more package installation options, as well as being a more proper BSD-style package management system. In order to insure that Fink and DarwinPorts coexist peacefully, the path to DarwinPorts should come before Fink. In order to do this, make sure the last lines in your .profile look like this:

test -r /sw/bin/init.sh && . /sw/bin/init.sh

export PATH="/opt/local/bin:${PATH}"
export MANPATH="/opt/local/share/man:${MANPATH}"
export INFOPATH="/opt/local/share/info:${INFOPATH}"

2004-09-20: Fink 0.7.1 released.-

The latest Fink releases, version 0.7.1 (for 10.3), is now available for both source and binary users. This release is meant for Panther (10.3) based Mac OS X versions. The 0.6.3 release remains available for Jaguar (10.2) based Mac OS X versions.

This new releases incorporate various fixes to the package manager, many previously unavailable Binary packages have been added resulting in a total of 1650 Binary packages. This includes binaries for KDE 3.4.1 and GNOME 2.4.

To complete a new Fink installation you should follow the instructions posted here. You may upgrade your existing Fink to the latest Fink using your current installation. A full list of the differences between 0.7.0 and 0.7.1 can be viewed by visiting this page.

If you have questions or problems, please try the Fink mailing lists you can learn more about them here.

Please make sure you pick the appropriate installer for your Platform. Fink 0.6.3 will only install on Mac OS X 10.2.* while Fink 0.7.1 will only install on Mac OS X 10.3.*

The Fink Team would like to thank its many contributors, frequent helpers and developers for making this release happen. We also thank our community for downloading the prior release 0.7.0 more than 130'000 times. Without their constant support and valuable pointers Fink would not be where we are now..

Can you explain what this means for the casual Fink user? I'm about to install it for the first time -- what should I know before I install it? Will it screw up my existing Apple X11 install?