The State of Fink

[sao]

This is important information for all fink-users, please read carefully and follow what's necessary to do for your system.

The following was posted by Benjamin Reed (Fink Project Leader) at the fink-users list, on Oct 24th :

http://news.gmane.org/thread.php?gro...e.fink.general

Quote: In some parts of the world, Panther is already out, so I wanted to give an update on where things are. A more formal announcement will come when we're ready for a "real" release. How This Will Work ------------------ First of all, unlike the transition from 10.1 -> 10.2, we will continue to support the previous Mac OS X release. It may not be updated as quickly as the 10.3 tree, but we now at least have the resources in place to make it reasonable to support both. It would be nice to have volunteers from the community to help "backport" 10.3 changes, but that is something that will probably have to be worked out later. If you're interested, drop a line to fink-core <at> lists.sourceforge.net. The Transition to GCC 3.3 ------------------------- HOWEVER, to ease keeping things in sync between 10.2 and 10.3, our continued support for 10.2 will *only* be if you are using the gcc 3.3 update, since the differences between gcc3.1 and 3.3 are reasonably large as far as how porting happens. If you've been following the fink-devel list, you know that for the past few months we've been working on a tree dubbed "10.2-gcc3.3", which currently contains most of the packages in the 10.2 tree, updated to work with the new compiler. Even now more packages are getting moved over each day, and tools have now been written to make it easier to track changes between the different development trees. The 10.2-gcc3.3 tree is perfectly usable right now, although a little incomplete in unstable. David R. Morrison is working incredibly hard to finish putting together the first binary distribution for 10.2-gcc3.3, and it is expected to be coming any day now. The Transition to Panther ------------------------- The initial target for Panther users will be for you to use the 10.2-gcc3.3 binary distribution. This tree is binary-compatible with Panther and should provide a smooth upgrade path to the "real" 10.3 tree. The 10.3 tree is currently based on a subset of 10.2-gcc3.3, and is, like it's predecessor, continuously getting updated and is getting closer to parity with the other trees as time goes on. There's still plenty of work to do, but almost all of stable is there, and ready, and developers are diligently getting packages moved over to the unstable tree. What You Can Do --------------- Please help us test the 10.2-gcc3.3 and 10.3 trees. 10.2: If you're running 10.2, install the December developer tools if you haven't already, and then install the August updater. You can get them both at the Apple Developer Connection (http://developer.apple.com/). It does require registration, but is free. 10.3: If you're already running 10.3, be warned that if you installed fink's X11 package (instead of a system-xfree86 package), you may need to force-remove them, and then re-install Apple's X11 (make sure you also install the X11 SDK from the developer tools!) Everyone: Download the 0.15.1 beta of fink here: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/f...ar.gz?download ...and follow the instructions for the rsync upgrade (which are good general instructions for upgrading your fink package manager to the beta): http://fink.sourceforge.net/download/rsync-upgrade.php The beta will set you up for 10.2-gcc3.3 or 10.3, depending on what OS version you are running. *Please* keep in mind that you shouldn't use apt-get or dselect to install things until we have a binary distribution (or if you do, make sure you do "fink update-all" afterwards so that any 10.2-gcc3.3 fixes or upgrades get built and installed). Once the 10.2-gcc3.3 bindist is ready, we will make an announcement and it will be safe to use binary tools again. Also keep in mind that for now, 10.2-gcc3.3 and 10.3 are still considered "beta". Expect the occasional problem. Generally, things are working pretty well, though. We'll let you know as soon as something official is available. --