On Jan 26, 2004, at 8:04 PM, Bill Northcott wrote:
On 27/01/2004, at 6:23 AM, Sean Ahern wrote:
Rich Cook wrote:
Not exactly. The problem with fink is that you can't guarantee that
it
exists on any particular box. The same thing would happen no matter
if you
had it install things in /sw or /usr/local. The same would be true
for
DarwinPorts.
To be clear, Rich Cook did not write that. Sean Ahern wrote that.
This is exactly my point. Surely one uses a commercial OS be it
Windows, MacOS, HP-UX, Solaris whatever, so that you can get 'shrink
wrap' software, install and run with no hassle. There are plenty of
perfectly good reasons to use GNU/Linux. What I cannot understand is
any reason to try and turn MacOS X into Linux.
I think you sound a bit paranoid here. Who's trying to turn OS X into
Linux? My main point is just about ease of porting.
The issue is one of practice. Once a number of people find that they
are loading multiple instances of the same library, they hassle Apple
to include it. Apple appear to be amenable to including more GNU
stuff as long as there is demonstrated demand. Panther introduced
many new packages including libiconv and libxml2. That is very
different from the Linux (Fink) approach of 'throw in everything just
in case.' That is a route to low quality and unpredictability in the
final mixture.
Fink is not evil, /usr/local is not evil. Absolutely the Unix
environment is lower quality in terms of user interface, but it is not
inherently disorganized as you portray it. Careful system
administration allows large Unix installations, with hundreds or
thousands of users, to function just fine. Unix is very manageable.
Programmers looking for an easy way to port to OS X should be aware
that the Unix standard tools such as autoconf and make are all there
waiting to be used if they like. Admittedly, their users will have to
deal with the ardurous task of learning to use Unix command lines, but
typically, these tools are used by scientists well versed in Unix, who
value the versatility of OS X's unix underpinnings and the elegance of
the OS X Aqua work environment.
--
Richard Cook
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Bldg-451 Rm-2043, Mail Stop L-561
7000 East Avenue, Livermore, CA, 94550, USA
phone (925) 423-9605 (work) fax (925) 423-8704
---
Information Management & Graphics Grp., Services & Development Div.,
Integrated Computing & Communications Dept.
(opinions expressed herein are mine and not those of LLNL)
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