The Fink project
ports open source Unix applications to Mac OS X which you can download
either in binary format or with the full source to compile them locally
on your computer. As I made a clear start with my iMac yesterday and as
I am likely to need quite a few open source packages, I’ll reinstall
fink and log my actions here for future reference. First we need the Fink 0.6.2 binary installer which we unpack in the usual way (at the end
of which a Terminal window pops up to ask you whether it’s good create
a .profile, just say Yes). After this the install process goes
ahead for a while (processing Fink and optimizing the HD and system
performance) and we are done!
Usually one controls
Fink via the command line : sudo fink install package-name will
install the package and if you want to remove it at a later stage just
type sudo fink remove package-name. One can also browse through a
list of packages via sudo dselect but as I skrewed up earlier I
am now going for a graphical user-interface approach called FinkCommander.
I choose for the binary disk image download which
presents no problem and copy the resulting FinkCommander both to
my Application Folder and to my Dock. More help on the
FinkCommander is available here
and there is also a Fink
documentation page which should contain all the info I need when
I’m going to install some packages (soon).