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On Dec 7, 2011, at 5:18, Pierre Baguis < email@hidden> wrote: Thank you guys for the great info. There are some points though that need clarification.
(1) I am a little bit confused about the fate of an existing X11 installation. What I have in the Macbook is the initial (from the DVD) X11 installation on top of which the XQuartz updates were applied. So, if I just update the system (Leopard --> Snow Leopard) without erasing the hard disk and wishing to use the existing Fink installation, should I just apply the latest XQuartz version for SL?
The SL install will overwrite the XQuartz install from Leopard, so you end up with a stock X11. Whether you want to install XQuartz after that depends on what you need from X11. Fink and MacPorts have recommendations on the best X11 environments for their systems. On SL the stock X11 and XQuartz exist side by side, but there are still cases where package managers can get confused.
(2) I understand that the Fink packages would need recompilation, likely to take days on this machine. Does the Snow Leopard DVD contains the developer tools also? If not, how do I get them and install them when previous versions
would be present?
I generally uninstall old developer tools before the update, then reinstall. There is a script in the /Developer/Library folder to do the uninstall. The SL DVD contains a version of the developer tools as an optional install you need to run after the upgrade.
(3) Let's say that I update the system as explained previously (just updating without reformatting) and I decide to go MacPorts which comes with its own X11, if I understand well. Could this cause any trouble since there would be already in the system an older X11 installation? If yes, how do I clean up the system from old X11/XQuartz components before proceeding to MacPorts?
Just don't install XQuartz and your X11 will be stock SL. You can then let MacPorts do it's thing.
(4) The Macbook is an old one ( see here http://tinyurl.com/c6qylc2 ) but 64-bit nonetheless. I am not sure if it can run Lion but even if it can, it is probably not a good idea to install it on such an old machine, almost four years old now. The plan is to use it for about one more year, probably less, and then give it to my daughter for music and light work after erasing everything and reinstalling OS X from scratch. I am
approaching system updates very carefully because some of the work carried out on this machine is of critical importance (tight deadlines and the like). But since Leopard software becomes increasingly scarce, I decided to give Snow Leopard a try.
My biggest issue with Fink so far is that, when packages are starting to pile up, it has a hard time dealing with the clutter of dependencies which leaves me with a system that cannot be updated any more. During the Panther days it worked better but not now. This is why I keep an eye on alternative solutions.
Fink's update-all does get confused if there are too many packages to update. If that happens I generally update packages one at a time until the list gets a bit smaller.
Btw, you can install both fink and MacPorts on the same machine if you don't mind juggling your path variable before updating or installing through either one.
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