Re: X11 Apps and Fink / Macports
Re: X11 Apps and Fink / Macports
- Subject: Re: X11 Apps and Fink / Macports
- From: "Tom Scogland" <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2008 10:23:35 -0500
Fink does use aptitude, the debian package manager, but the
repositories have to be seperate. Linux runs ELF, a.out, and possibly
some other binary formats depending on how the kernel is set up,
unfortunately OSX does not as far as I'm aware. It uses the special
binary format offered by mach to allow things like universal binaries
(single binary file which is actually two largely different
executables). So, until such time as there is a program like wine to
allow the execution of linux binaries in a different environment, it
can't use the ubuntu repos. Now, that said, they could use the ubuntu
*source* repositories, and just pray that the source compiles, that
could work, or use gentoo's emerge (in fact this project exists, osx
portage or something like that, if you google around you'll find it)
since those options would create the correct binary. Of course, the
source is not certain either, since osx doesn't offer everything linux
does, I mean it took until leopard to get a non file based semaphore,
there are some issues there.
To sum up, short answer, no, it's not possible, long answer, if you
had enough time (years) you could make the binary dists from linux
work, or you could use the source repos, or to save time and
difficulty over either of those one could pull from the BSD
distributions, but none of them have all that many more packages than
macports right now.
Really do wish it would be that easy though... *gets a wistful look on his face*
On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 9:25 AM, Joseph W. Losco
<email@hidden> wrote:
> Hello Usersgroup,
>
> I've been reading for about 6 months or so, but never really got involved in
> discussion because I don't have anywhere the knowledge of most of the users
> here. But I've been wondering something in the back of my mind for quite
> some time now, and figured I might as well ask.
>
> I started with X11 in Ubuntu, and got spoiled pretty quick with the massive
> amount of packages available and through the repository installer that they
> have. And they've been rapidly becoming a very strong operating system, but
> I got tired of the hardware issues and not being able to get programs I use
> all the time working without some serious tinkering. That was about 6
> months ago, when I bought my Macbook pro and started playing with Fink,
> because of the dpkg installer, and how close it was to debian styles.
> However I found out pretty quick that the packages available are not near
> what was available for Ubuntu, I then tried MacPorts and found pretty much
> the same thing. I tried compiling myself with a prefix to put things in a
> third directory tree, but ran into issues because I'm not sure of all of the
> ins and outs in getting all of the linking and flags correct.
>
> So after my longer winded introduction, my question is
>
> I know this probably isn't possible right now but, how hard would it
> be to link to something such as the ubuntu repositories and install debian
> packages, or to do a source install from the debian/ubuntu repositories.
> The way Fink works, I'd think its pretty close, but maybe I'm not clear on
> how it has to be compiled for OSX. I mean is there a reason that Fink uses
> its own repository since it uses the debian type installer?
>
> Thanks in advance for any opinions, comments, etc.
>
> Joe
>
>
>
>
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--
-N
AKA:Tom Scogland
I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited.
Imagination encircles the world.
-Albert Einstein
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