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Re: Fink

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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to keep one Mac running an outdated version of Mac OS X at times because 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.

-- 
Tom "Tom" Harrington
Independent Mac OS X developer since 2002
http://www.atomicbird.com/

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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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