Re: "fink...fink...fink"
Re: "fink...fink...fink"
- Subject: Re: "fink...fink...fink"
- From: magenta <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 12:07:06 -0800
On Wed, Feb 12, 2003 at 11:09:09AM -0800, Michael wrote:
> On Wednesday, February 12, 2003, at 06:24 AM,
> email@hidden wrote:
>
> > Message: 16
> > Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 09:06:29 -0500
> > Subject: fink or no fink
> > From: Jeff Jolley <email@hidden>
> > To: email@hidden
> >
> > My question is: do I really need to install/use fink? (plus other
> > post-fink questions...kinda rambly but I think it relates)
> No. Fink is not a requirement.
> It can make installation of some unix apps easier though.
> I used it king ago, and then again more recently. Both times I
> removed it after a few days. It's pretty neat with the Fink
> Commander interface and all but I just decided I don't want a
> separate software install location.
Apparently you haven't yet had to update your software en masse. That's
where Debian (and its various forks, like Fink) win out BIG.
apt-get update dist-upgrade
will download and cleanly upgrade *every* thing which was installed by fink
(using the binary distribution), and
fink update-all
will download and recompile and cleanly upgrade *every* outdated thing
which was installed by fink, period.
It's a great tool on servers where you want to make sure you've got the
latest security fixes installed and so on, but it's also great on
workstations where you don't want to have to dick around with library
version dependencies and so on, and you don't have to manually poll every
program you run to see if there's a newer version.
> I've been using stand alone binary installs for my stuff.
Have fun when you want to *un*install one of those. That's the other big
thing that Debian/Fink provides which seems to be missing from opendarwin's
packages.
> > Does apt-get/fink work in a way that will see what I manually build?
> > Or will it just blindly download it's version of glib-2.2.1, force the
> > install, then install the other package I want?
> It detected the X11 install. But since fink installs into /sw,
> replacing is
> not usually an issue.
> If you built from scratch directly to /sw? I think it does/can detect
> what's
> already installed whether by you or not, based on package receipts.
> I'll let a more fink knowledgeable person dig me out of this hole my
> mouth
> has dug for me :)
fink maintains its own package database (similar to, but MUCH more powerful
than, OSX's "receipts"). It exists totally separately from the OSX
application space (aside from needing to stash X in /usr and /etc instead
of in /sw for reasons which still aren't particularly clear to me). fink's
compile vs. binary behavior depends on which command you use to install
something. If you use apt, it'll use a binary package if it's available,
and let you know if it's not available. If you use fink, it'll use a
source package.
Typically, when I want to install something, I use apt, since I don't care
about "local optimizations" (which is the big rallying cry for all of the
"COMPILE YOUR OWN PACKAGES!" folks), though every now and then there'll be
something I want to install which needs a newer version than what's
available in the binary distribution, so I use fink.
BTW, they're not separate systems. What fink does is it downloads the
source, compiles it into a package, and then uses the same package system
as apt to install it, and stores the binary package in a local repository
so that if you uninstall it, you still have your local build package
available.
--
http://trikuare.cx
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