Re: X11 Apps and Fink / Macports
Re: X11 Apps and Fink / Macports
- Subject: Re: X11 Apps and Fink / Macports
- From: "Chris Linstid" <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2008 17:37:42 -0400
Unfortunately, I think that Gentoo on OS X project has been dead for a
LONG time.
I have had the most luck using MacPorts... the downside is that you
have to build everything which takes a lot of time, but they have
pretty good support for the latest open source applications.
If you want any support for recent packages from Fink, you also have
to switch to building your packages because their binary repositories
are woefully out of date (at least they were the last time I checked).
The upside there is that part of the Fink build process is generating
debian packages, so you can store them in a local repository... and
theoretically, you could set that up for others to pull binary images
from. So, if you have a bunch of OS X systems (all same architecture
of course), you could just build the packages you need on the fastest
one and then have the rest of the systems pull binary packages from
that one.
As a side note, FreeBSD has Linux binary compatibility support, so it
should be possible to port that functionality to OS X, but it would be
a pretty gigantic undertaking.
On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 12:51 PM, Joseph W. Losco
<email@hidden> wrote:
> Wow, I haven't heard of the Gentoo Portage till you said that. That looks
> very interesting at the least. I'll have to dig around and see what the
> packages look like. At least in the meantime until it is that easy.
> *grins*
>
> Thanks
>
>
> On Jun 5, 2008, at 11:23 AM, Tom Scogland wrote:
>
>> 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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