Fink Project News

fink-0.32.5.5 released

fink-0.32.5.5 was released on 9 April, 2012. This bugfix release fixes an issue with bootstrapping on 10.5/PowerPC.

fink-0.32.5.4 released

fink-0.32.5.4 was released on 8 April, 2012. This release allows users on 10.7 to bootstrap against the Xcode Command Line Tools. Note that some packages actually require the full Xcode to build.

fink-0.32.4.1 released

fink-0.32.4.1 was released on 27 March, 2012. This release allows users to install Xcode 4.3.x in an arbitrary location.

After installing Xcode 4.3.x, users should: (1) Select the Components pane from Xcode->Preferences->Downloads and install the Command Line Tools, or install them via the separate installer from connect.apple.com, and (2) run

sudo xcode-select -switch /path/to/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer

(replacing /path/to with the actual path to the Xcode app) to make sure that everything is pointed in the right place.

fink-0.32.4.1 also enhances the checksumming operation under fink fetch.

fink-0.32.3 released

fink-0.32.3 was released on 16 February, 2012. This release recognizes changes that were made for Xcode 4.3.

After installing Xcode 4.3 in /Applications (and only there) , users should: (1) Select the Components pane from Xcode->Preferences->Downloads and install the Command Line Tools, or install them via the separate installer from connect.apple.com, and (2) run

sudo xcode-select -switch /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer

to make sure that everything is pointed in the right place.

fink-0.32.2 released

fink-0.32.2 was released on 3 February, 2012. This release contains a fix for a bug in the handling of multiple source archives in a package, and recognizes OS 10.7.3.

fink-0.32.1 released

fink-0.32.1 was released on 26 January, 2012. This release introduces a number of new features.

Those that impact package maintainers include: RuntimeDepends, which are dependencies that are only required when a package is installed, improvements to the package validator, updated manpages, and direct support for .xz archives.

Those that impact users include improvements in the bootstrap script and additional helpful suggestions in the post-error output.

fink-0.31.6 released

fink-0.31.6 was released on 3 January, 2012. This is a bugfix release to address issues with the use of HTTP proxies under cvs selfupdates.

fink-0.31.5 released

fink-0.31.5 was released to the 10.4/stable and 10.7/stable trees on 22 November, 2011. This is a bugfix release to address bootstrapping and building on OS X 10.6 with Xcode 4.2.

fink-0.31.4 released

fink-0.31.4 was released to the 10.4/stable and 10.7/stable trees on 28 October, 2011. The primary new feature in this release is to ensure that the default compiler on OS X 10.6 is the same for Xcode 3.2.x and 4.2. In addition, the versions of some of the other essential packages which get installed at bootstrap have been updated.

fink-0.31.3 released

fink-0.31.3 was released to the 10.4/stable and 10.7/stable trees on 12 October, 2011. It recognizes OS 10.7.2 as a supported OS X version, and recognizes Growl 1.3 from the App Store.

Phasing out the unstable tree.

To make our logistics easier, as well as to make the user experience better, we have begun to phase out the unstable tree. Users won't notice any difference unless they have deactivated stable in the Trees: line of fink.conf, which was never a recommended course of action.

fink-0.31.2 released

fink-0.31.2 was released to the 10.4/unstable and 10.7/stable trees on 26 September, 2011. Packages are now built by default using the number of parallel threads specified by the MaxBuildJobs field set via fink configure. In addition, maintainers no longer have to specify a particular version of fink to use a PatchFile, and fixes a Perl issue.

It is expected that the package will be added to 10.4/stable shortly.

fink-0.31.1 released

fink-0.31.1 was released to the 10.4/unstable and 10.7/stable trees on 11 September, 2011. It fixes an issue in which 32-bit machines running OS 10.6 wouldn't be allowed to bootstrap, even though this is a fully supported configuration. It also provides a more robust scheme to report on the Xcode version in error messages than in prior fink versions. Finally OS 10.7.1 is recognized as a supported OS version.

It is expected that the package will be added to 10.4/stable shortly.

Update, 2011-09-26: It has been added to 10.4/stable.

Fink and Lion--updated.

OS X 10.7 "Lion" was released on July 20, 2011. We want to let Fink users know what to expect if updating.

First, the fink program itself will not run on a system which has been upgraded to Lion, so it is not possible currently to update a Fink installation in place.However, is possible to use the dpkg program to extract a list of the Fink packages which are current installed so that they can be reinstalled under 10.7. Use

dpkg --get-selections | cut -f1 > fink_packages.txt

before updating to 10.7 to dump the package names to a text file, and

cat fink_packages.txt | xargs fink install

once you have installed Fink on 10.7.

To upgrade Fink after upgrading to Lion, one will have to bootstrap Fink again, using a tarball for fink-0.31.0 or later. If you want to use the same directory (e.g. /sw) for Fink that you were using on 10.6, you'll need to remove that before bootstrapping, since the bootstrap doesn't allow you to overwrite an existing Fink tree.

Second, due to lots of changes under the hood, there currently are many fewer Fink packages which build under 10.7 as opposed to 10.6. Thus, even if you've extracted a list of Fink packages which had been installed under 10.6, some of them may not yet be installable under 10.7. We are currently creating a database showing which packages can be successfully installed under 10.7, and work is ongoing to add packages.

10.7 introduces several drastic changes to how the system works. While this may cause a slight delay in full Fink functionality in the short term, it will make Fink work better in the future.

Fink and Lion.

Apple has announced that OS X 10.7 "Lion" will be released in July. We want to let Fink users know what to expect when Lion is released.

First, the fink program itself will not run on a system which has been upgraded to Lion. However, it will be possible to use the dpkg program to extract a list of the Fink packages which had been installed under 10.6, so that they can be reinstalled under 10.7. Use

dpkg --get-selections | cut -f1 > fink_packages.txt

to extract the packages, and

cat fink_packages.txt | xargs fink install

once you have installed Fink for 10.7.

(To upgrade fink after upgrading to Lion, one will have to bootstrap fink again, using a new version of fink which will be released shortly after Lion has been released. Watch this space for an announcement.)

Second, due to lots of changes under the hood, there will initially be many fewer Fink packages which work under 10.7 as opposed to 10.6. Thus, even if you've extracted a list of Fink packages which had been installed under 10.6, some of them may not yet be installable under 10.7. We are currently creating a database showing which packages can be successfully installed under 10.7, but that database may not be complete prior to the release of Lion.

10.7 introduces several drastic changes to how the system works. While this may cause a slight delay in full Fink functionality in the short term, it will make Fink work better in the future.