Chapter 11. Fink
Fink is essentially a port of the
Debian Advanced Package Tool (APT), with
some frontends and its own centralized collection site, which stores
packaged binaries, source code, and patches needed to build software
on Mac OS X. The Fink package manager allows you to install a
package,
choosing whether to install it from source or a binary package.
Consistent with Debian, binary package files are in the
dpkg format with a
.deb extension
and are managed with the ported Debian tools
dpkg and apt-get.
Fink also provides tools that create a .deb
package from source. It maintains a database of installed software
that identifies packages by the combination of name, version, and
revision. Moreover, Fink understands dependencies, uses
rsync to propagate software updates, supports
uninstallation, and makes it easy to see available packages and
installed packages. Fink can be used to install over a thousand Unix
packages that are freely available and will run on Mac OS X. Fink
recognizes and supports Apple’s X11 implementation
for running X windows applications, but you can also use Fink to
install XFree86 if you prefer.
Fink installs itself and all of its packages, with the exception of
XFree86, in a directory named
/sw, thus completely
separating it from the main /usr system
directory. If problems occur with Fink-installed packages, you can
simply delete the entire /sw directory tree
without affecting your system.
Installing Fink
You can install Fink from binary, from a ...
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