Recently I started using Fink on Mac OS X to install Unix open source software. Fink is easy to use, and simplifies the process of installing open source software applications on Mac OS X.
To learn about how to use Fink, just open a Terminal window and type this command:
fink --help
That brings up the following help text (the fink man page):
Fink 0.24.17 Usage: fink [options] command [package...] fink install pkg1 [pkg2 ...] Common commands: install - install/update the named packages remove - remove the named packages purge - same as remove but also removes all configuration files update - update the named packages selfupdate - upgrade fink to the lastest release update-all - update all installed packages configure - rerun the configuration process list - list available packages, optionally filtering by name, see 'fink list --help' for more options apropos - list packages matching a search keyword describe - display a detailed description of the named packages index - force rebuild of package cache validate - performs various checks on .info and .deb files scanpackages - rescans the list of binary packages on the system cleanup - reclaims disk space used by temporary or obsolete files show-deps - list run-time and compile-time package dependencies Common options: -h, --help - display this help text -q, --quiet - causes fink to be less verbose, opposite of --verbose -V, --version - display version information -v, --verbose - causes fink to be more verbose, opposite of --quiet -y, --yes - assume default answer for all interactive questions -b, --use-binary-dist - download pre-compiled packages from the binary distribution if available --no-use-binary-dist - don't use pre-compiled packages from the binary distribution (opposite of -b) See the fink(8) manual page for a complete list of commands and options. Visit http://fink.sourceforge.net/ for further information.
Using Fink to install Subversion
As I mentioned in another blog post, I used Fink to install Subversion on my MacBook Pro. The commands are pretty simple. I typed this command to list the available svn
packages:
fink list svn
This resulted in the following output:
Information about 1732 packages read in 2 seconds. libapache2-mod-svn 1.2.3-1012 Subversion - mod_svn libapache2-ssl-mod-svn 1.2.3-1012 Subversion - mod_svn (with SSL) i svn 1.2.3-1012 Subversion - svnserve, tools i svn-client 1.2.3-1012 Subversion - Client svn-client-ssl 1.2.3-1012 Subversion - Client (with SSL) svn-dev 1.2.3-1012 Subversion - Development headers and libraries i svn-doc 1.2.3-1012 Subversion - Documentation svn-javahl 1.2.3-1012 Subversion - Java bindings i svn-shlibs 1.2.3-1012 Subversion - Shared libraries svn-ssl 1.2.3-1012 Subversion - svnserve, tools (with SSL) svn-ssl-dev 1.2.3-1012 Subversion - Development headers and libraries (with SSL) svn-ssl-doc 1.2.3-1012 Subversion - Documentation svn-ssl-javahl 1.2.3-1012 Subversion - Java bindings (with SSL) svn-ssl-shlibs 1.2.3-1012 Subversion - Shared libraries (with SSL) svn-ssl-swig-pm-shlibs [virtual package] svn-ssl-swig-pm586 1.2.3-1012 Subversion - Swig Perl bindings (with SSL) svn-ssl-swig-pm586-shlibs 1.2.3-1012 Subversion - Swig Perl Shared libraries (with SSL) svn-ssl-swig-py23 1.2.3-1012 Subversion - Swig Python bindings (with SSL) svn-ssl-swig-py24 1.2.3-1012 Subversion - Swig Python bindings (with SSL) svn-swig-pm-shlibs [virtual package] svn-swig-pm586 1.2.3-1012 Subversion - Swig Perl bindings svn-swig-pm586-shlibs 1.2.3-1012 Subversion - Swig Perl Shared libraries
I knew I wanted to install the Subversion server and client, so I then typed this command to install the SVN server:
fink install svn
and this command to install the SVN client:
fink install svn-client
As Fink goes to work you'll see the output from your commands, and in short order the SVN server and client are installed.
Updates using Fink
As a test, I just typed the following command to see how the update process works:
fink update svn
Unfortunately there weren't any updates available, but it was cool to try.