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Re: Fink

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On Thu, 14 Apr 2011 10:24:22 -0600, Tom Harrington wrote:

> In article <pan.2011.04.14.00.20.29@moria.lan>,
>  Dan C <youmustbejoking@lan.invalid> wrote:
> 
>> Hello all,
>> 
>> Long time Linux user, just got my first iMac (21.5" version).  Quite
>> impressed so far...  Somebody told me about "Fink", website here:
>> 
>> http://www.finkproject.org/index.php?phpLang=en
>> 
>> ...and wondering what some of you experienced users think of it.  Seems
>> like a cool way to run some open-source apps that are not natively
>> available on the Mac.  For instance, the 'Pan' newsreader that I am
>> fond of in Linux, would love to be able to run that on the Mac.
>> 
>> Any thoughts on this Fink thing?  Does it work well?  Thanks.
> 
> Fink was OK, and so was MacPorts. More recently I've used HomeBrew
> (https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew).
> 
> In general, how well these schemes work depend on how deep the
> dependency tree runs. Simple command line tools, usually no problem.
> More dependencies lead to more potential problems. Once you get up to
> the level where Gnome or GTK are in the mix I found them to be hit or
> miss at best. There's almost always something buried somewhere in the
> dependency tree that doesn't build out of the box. I was usually
> attempting to build gnucash, which is apparently the acid test of this
> approach, and the test failed quite often.
> 
> I also found that ports listed on the projects' web sites would often
> turn out not to actually work, so any information you find on what's
> available should be considered as potentially wrong.
> 
> They're least useable just after a major release of Mac OS X-- I've had
> to keep one Mac running an outdated version of Mac OS X at times because
> the porting projects took a while to catch up (I'd try to help with the
> updating but that's not my forte as a developer and after literally days
> of work I'd eventually give up). Similar problems can crop up after a
> major update to Apple's developer tools, which the porting projects rely
> on. Eventually I decided this was too much trouble and I mostly gave up
> on them. Gnucash has a pre-built version that I can just download and
> run with no issues, so that's what I do now.

Excellent.  Thanks for the input.


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Fink Dan C <youmustbejoking@lan.invalid> - 2011-04-14 00:21 +0000
  Re: Fink Chris Schram <chrispam1@frontier.com> - 2011-04-13 20:59 -0700
    Re: Fink Dan C <youmustbejoking@lan.invalid> - 2011-04-14 13:12 +0000
  Re: Fink Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.com> - 2011-04-14 10:52 +0000
    Re: Fink Dan C <youmustbejoking@lan.invalid> - 2011-04-14 13:13 +0000
  Re: Fink Richard Kettlewell <rjk@greenend.org.uk> - 2011-04-14 12:25 +0100
    Re: Fink Dan C <youmustbejoking@lan.invalid> - 2011-04-14 13:13 +0000
  Re: Fink Warren Oates <warren.oates@gmail.com> - 2011-04-14 07:44 -0400
    Re: Fink Dan C <youmustbejoking@lan.invalid> - 2011-04-14 13:12 +0000
      Re: Fink Warren Oates <warren.oates@gmail.com> - 2011-04-14 11:38 -0400
        Re: Fink Dan C <youmustbejoking@lan.invalid> - 2011-04-14 21:07 +0000
      Re: Fink Paul Sture <paul.nospam@sture.ch> - 2011-04-14 22:39 +0200
        Re: Fink Dan C <youmustbejoking@lan.invalid> - 2011-04-15 00:30 +0000
          Re: Fink Paul Sture <paul.nospam@sture.ch> - 2011-04-15 09:48 +0200
        Re: Fink Stainless Steel Rat <ratinox@newsguy.com> - 2011-04-15 14:41 +0000
  Re: Fink Tom Harrington <tph@pcisys.no.spam.dammit.net> - 2011-04-14 10:24 -0600
    Re: Fink Dan C <youmustbejoking@lan.invalid> - 2011-04-14 21:08 +0000
  Re: Fink "giuseppe.on.usenet" <giuseppe.on.usenet@gmail.com> - 2011-04-17 06:19 -0700
    Re: Fink Dan C <youmustbejoking@lan.invalid> - 2011-04-17 14:52 +0000

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