Fink is a package manager that makes it easy to install Unix Open Source software on your Mac. Anyone who has tried to install/compile Open Source software on a system based on Unix or Linux will understand how heavenly these package managers can be. Keep reading to learn how to easily and quickly install Fink on your Mac, or if it’s currently installed, updating to the newest release. Feel free to jump ahead, or start from the beginning for a clean install:
- Step 1. Downloading Fink - Source or Binary?
- Step 2. Installing Fink
- Step 3. Updating Fink
- Step 4. Installing Packages
Leopard Update
The only way I’ve found to update Fink on Leopard and avoid having to start from scratch is to update to the newest source release on Tiger before copying your /sw directory to Leopard. If you have the binary of Fink installed on Tiger, go to Step 3: Updating from Binary to Source. Otherwise, go to Step 3: Updating Binary or Source. After updating Fink on Tiger, install Leopard and copy your /sw directory from Tiger to Leopard. Before continuing, make sure you have XCode 3.0 installed, or this next step won’t work. Once it’s installed, open up a terminal and type
That’s it!
I was lucky enough to have made a bootable copy of my Tiger setup before installing Leopard. My condolences for those of you who don’t have a bootable copy of Tiger and already switched to Leopard. If someone out there knows how to update Fink without starting from scratch in this case, please leave a comment!
Step 1. Downloading Fink - Source or Binary?
Your first choice is to choose whether you want to download the binary or source version of Fink. As far as I’m concerned, it’s best to download and install the source version. The biggest reason for this is for a lot of packages, the most updated version is only available in source. In fact, this is true of Fink itself! To see this, you can go to the online package database, type fink in the search field, click on fink from the resulting list, and you’ll arrive at the following:
Okay, so the binary version is an earlier release than the source. So what? I ran into this problem myself, and apparently it is a Frequently Asked Question, but I wanted some software that had a dependancy with a specific version. I checked whether Fink had it, and it did, but not the newest version that I needed. The solution is basically to update your Fink package manager, but I couldn’t go beyond the binary version that I had installed! So I had to switch to source (see how to do this in Step 3 below). Once I did, the version I needed magically appeared. So the point is: the source version of Fink keeps you completely up to date on all packages (including Fink).
Step 2. Installing Fink
The next two sections are very similar to Fink’s Quick Start page
Installing the Binary
Go to the fink website and download the binary package appropriate for your version of OS X (You can also go directly to the sourceforge site). Making sure you are logged into an account with administrator privileges, double click the dmg file and follow the instructions. It will ask you at some point to modify your path in whatever shell you’re using. Go ahead and let it. This is so all of the Fink binaries and libraries that are installed can be found from within Terminal.
Installing from Source
The first thing to do is download and install XCode Tools/Developer Tools. Download the most updated version at the Apple Developer Connection. Keep in mind that you’ll want the version appropriate for your OS, as listed in the following table:
| 10.2 | December 2002 Developer Tools August 2003 gcc3.3 updater |
| 10.3 | XCode 1.5 November 2004 gcc3.3 updater |
| 10.4 (PowerPC) | XCode 2.4.1 XCode Legacy Tools |
| 10.4 (Intel) | XCode 2.4.1 |
| 10.5 (Leopard) | XCode 3.0 |
Now go to the fink website and download the source distribution. From within Terminal, go to the directory where Fink was downloaded and type
cd fink-0.27.6
./bootstrap
Fink will then ask you a series of questions. All of the defaults can be chosen by simply pressing enter, except for one. Fink will ask you if you want to install unstable packages. I recommend you choose Yes here. A lot of times the most up-to-date version of software is only available as an unstable package, and there are many packages that are only available as unstable distributions. I have currently never had a problem or bug with an unstable package. The term unstable is unfortunately a little overly dramatic.
That should be it. The script will download everything for you, compile and then install things in the appropriate place.
Step 3. Updating Fink
Once you’ve got Fink installed, it’s important to update to the newest release. Again, this is so you can be fully up to date on the packages that are available for download.
Updating Binary or Source
Whether you have the binary or the source version, updating Fink is easy. Simply type
and Fink will update itself with the corresponding binary or source version. Once this is complete, you may want to update all of the installed packages as well:
This will download and install all binary packages, as well as downloading and compiling the source code for the installed source packages. There is a high probability that you may run into a little snag here (see Frequently Asked Question Q7.7 involving gettext). You may get the following output from Fink:
fink scanpackages
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gettext=0.10.40-25
Follow Fink’s instructions and rerun update-all
This fixed things quickly for me and all was well. At this point Fink and all packages are updated to their newest releases!
Updating from Binary to Source
The above section covers going from binary/source to the newest binary/source release. What if you have the binary and want to update to the source release?
I had trouble figuring this out myself. I needed a newer package manager so that I could download software that wasn’t available even in the newest binary release. First, if you eventually want to include unstable packages, this is a good time to do it. Since you have the binary version installed, you will need to manually edit your Fink configuration file (in newer (i.e. source) versions of Fink, all you need to do is type sudo fink configure). The configuration file is located at /sw/etc/fink.conf. Open it with your favorite editor (I’m a vi fan myself. Make sure you use sudo!). Here’s what your configuration file might look like:
Basepath: /sw
RootMethod: sudo
Trees: local/main stable/main stable/crypto
Distribution: 10.4
ConfFileCompatVersion: 1
Mirror-apache: http://www.apache.org/dist
Mirror-apt: http://bindist.finkmirrors.net/bindist
Mirror-cpan: ftp://ftp.cpan.org/pub/CPAN
Mirror-ctan: ftp://tug.ctan.org/tex-archive
Mirror-debian: ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian
Mirror-gimp: ftp://ftp.gimp.org/pub/gimp
Mirror-gnome: ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME
Mirror-gnu: ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu
Mirror-kde: ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde
Mirror-master: http://distfiles.master.finkmirrors.net/
Mirror-rsync: rsync://master.us.finkmirrors.net/finkinfo/
Mirror-sourceforge: http://west.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/
MirrorContinent: nam
MirrorCountry: nam-us
MirrorOrder: MasterFirst
ProxyPassiveFTP: true
UseBinaryDist: true
Verbose: 1
SelfUpdateMethod: rsync
Simply change the line
to
Now, here’s the important part. To update fink from binary to source, type
then continue as in the previous section.
Step 4. Installing packages
To get you started installing packages, there are two main commands to use: fink list and fink install. To get a list of all available packages for installation, type
You can narrow down the list with an optional name filter. For example, if I want to see packages with ssh in the name, I type
and I get the following packages (with their versions and descriptions removed):
ccvssh
kdessh
libssh2
libssh2-shlibs
openssh
openssh-hpn
scanssh
sshfs
webmin-sshd
x11-ssh-ask…
Finally, let’s say you want to install sshfs. Simply type
and that’s it! Enjoy using Fink, and stay tuned for future posts on some Fink tips and tricks.
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August 23, 2008 at 8:58 pm
[...] fink update-all, updates all binary and source packages. You might run into a problem: see this or this [...]