Posted November 19th, 2004 @ 10:55am by Erik J. Barzeski
Question: Do you use fink?
My Answer: I don't even have it installed on my system. I did once - back in 10.1 or 10.2, I think - but I never ended up using it, so, I have simply failed to expend the necessary energy to get it on my 10.3 setups.
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Posted 19 Nov 2004 at 11:30am #
Oh yes, I absolutely use fink, if for no other reason than ls -a doesn't work in Apple's version of ls, and that's just annoying.
Posted 19 Nov 2004 at 12:29pm #
I use Fink all the time. Currently I have emacs (because the built-in emacs doesn't support X or color), ncftp, wget, and a bunch of libraries installed. I know that I could get naitive packages for many of these, but Fink makes it so easy.
Posted 19 Nov 2004 at 12:31pm #
no. fink left a dirty taste in my mouth (debian package tools, ick). darwinports feels cleaner to me, and the layout of the ports is much .. nicer, to say the least. coming from a freebsd and openbsd background, darwinports just worked out better for me.
Posted 19 Nov 2004 at 12:33pm #
'ls -a' works for me in 10.3.6
Posted 19 Nov 2004 at 12:37pm #
'ls -a' has worked for me for as long as I can remember too. I used it in 10.2. My primary alias is 'lis' which maps to 'ls -laF,' after all.
Posted 19 Nov 2004 at 3:04pm #
No. I used it before upgrading to 10.3.x. Not enough useful stuff/time to work with it to warrant the space.
Posted 19 Nov 2004 at 3:35pm #
I used it a bit a few years ago, but I don't have it installed now. Panther has good enough versions of just about everything, so I don't really have a need for it. On the rare occasion when I want something Apple doesn't provide, I just go grab the source for the particular program I want and compile it myself.
Posted 19 Nov 2004 at 3:40pm #
I have it installed and use it rarely. When I do it is a real time saver though.
Posted 19 Nov 2004 at 4:50pm #
My reason to install Fink was to get the Xemacs sumo package. While the sources also build fine, the result seems to miss a lot of packages and I don't have the time to find out why 😉 The Fink packages works just right.
I think building Mozilla/Firefox from scratch also requires Fink.
Posted 19 Nov 2004 at 6:21pm #
Yes, No, kinda...
One system my tower does have a fink install and its kept up to day. I tend to user my tower more as work server than anything... so I used fink to install some of the dependacys to build Firefox, Thunderbird, Camino and the like. As well as some other apps thats. (the yes)
My main mobile system is my iBook and I loaded it up with all kinds of junk... infact its in a sad state. It has fink and gentoo's portage and if I'm not mistaken open darwin as well. (kinda)
My main home bound system is my Powerbook and thats more of a "clean" system and isn't weighted down with all the extra hassels. (no)
So as you see I'm just confused as to how I can answer this blasted question. Put me in the flip-o-flop section.
Oh and yea I know I don't need fink to build Firefox... I set my build tree up late one evening and I wasn't paying much attention.
Posted 19 Nov 2004 at 6:47pm #
Yes, I have it installed -- mostly for getting the latest version of ImageMagick.
Posted 19 Nov 2004 at 9:11pm #
Erik's QotD: Fink
Erik asks who out there uses Fink.
*puts hand up*. I do! I use it most days for work, as we use Subversion for source code control. It's nice that Fink handles all of the dependencies for you. It can be a bit rough around the edges sometimes, but I...
Posted 19 Nov 2004 at 11:28pm #
Yup, and I keep it relatively up to date too.
Posted 20 Nov 2004 at 10:57am #
I don't use it anymore. I have an image of my own default system with everything I need including the command line tools and *nix libraries I want. There are many customized configuration files on my system and I don't want Fink to mess with them (Fink is pretty good at not breaking things but I still don't want a secondary infrastructure for my tools in /sw and I still don't trust those package managers). I like to control my system on my own.
Posted 20 Nov 2004 at 11:43pm #
I only used vim, lftp, curl and wget, so I don't really need the entire fink at all.
Posted 21 Nov 2004 at 10:34pm #
I installed it for wget, but that's all I've needed it for so far. About time to uninstall I think.
Posted 22 Nov 2004 at 12:30am #
Eric, '/usr/bin/curl' too tough for ya?