Fink 0.8.0 Installation

These are the installation instructions for the "source" distribution of Fink 0.8.0, intended for use with OS X v.10.3 and later. The instructions can also be used for installation on OS X v.10.2 (replacing 0.8.0 by 0.6.3 throughout the document) and for installation on OS X v.10.1 (replacing 0.8.0 by 0.4.1a).

This document does not apply to the "binary" distribution.

There are instructions for both first time installation and upgrading from a previous version. Fast track instructions for the impatient are at the top.

Contents

1 The Fast Track

This section is for the impatient who don't want to take the time to learn their way around the command line world and don't care that they don't know what they're actually doing.

If you're looking for the real instructions, skip to the next section. (You can still use this section as an example.)

1.1 First Time Installation Fast Track

Start out by copying the fink-0.8.0-full.tar.gz file to your home folder. (Note: If you have OS X 10.4 and XCode 2.1, you should use fink-0.8.0-full-XCode-2.1.tar.gz instead, and make the appropriate changes below.) Then, open Terminal.app and follow the session below. Computer output is in normal face, your input is in bold face (or otherwise highlighted). The actual input prompts from the shell may vary, and some chunks of the output have been omitted (...).

[frodo:~] testuser% tar xzf fink-0.8.0-full.tar.gz
[frodo:~] testuser% cd fink-0.8.0-full
[frodo:~/fink-0.8.0-full] testuser% ./bootstrap.sh /sw

Welcome to Fink.

...
Choose a method: [1] 1

sudo /Users/testuser/fink-0.8.0-full/bootstrap.pl .sudo '/sw'
Password:(your normal password here)
...
OK, I'll ask you some questions and update the configuration file in
'/sw/etc/fink.conf'.

In what additional directory should Fink look for downloaded tarballs? [] (press return)
Always print verbose messages? [y/N] (press return)

Proxy/Firewall settings
Enter the URL of the HTTP proxy to use, or 'none' for no proxy. The URL
should start with http:// and may contain username, password or port
specifications. [none] (press return)
Enter the URL of the proxy to use for FTP, or 'none' for no proxy. The URL
should start with http:// and may contain username, password or port
specifications. [none] (press return)
Use passive mode FTP transfers (to get through a firewall)? [Y/n] y

Mirror selection
Choose a continent:
...
(enter the numbers corresponding to your location)
...
Writing updated configuration to '/sw/etc/fink.conf'...
Bootstrapping a base system via /sw/bootstrap.
...
(take a coffee break while Fink downloads and compiles the base packages)
...

You should now have a working Fink installation in '/sw'.

[frodo:~/fink-0.8.0-full] testuser% cd
[frodo:~] testuser% rm -r fink-0.8.0-full
[frodo:~] testuser% /sw/bin/pathsetup.sh

The last command runs a little script to help set up your Unix paths (and other things) for use with Fink. In most cases, it will run automatically, and prompt you for permission to make changes. If the script fails, you'll have to do things by hand.

(If you need to do things by hand, and you are using csh or tcsh, you need to make sure that the command source /sw/bin/init.csh is executed during startup of your shell, either by .login, .cshrc, .tcshrc, or something else appropriate. If you are using bash or similar shells, the command you need is . /sw/bin/init.sh, and places where it might get executed include .bashrc and .profile.)

Once you have set up the paths, open a new Terminal.app window, and close all other ones. That's it, you now have a base system installed.

You can now install additional packages with the fink command, like this:

[frodo:~] testuser% fink install xfree86-server gimp
sudo /sw/bin/fink 'install' 'xfree86-server' 'gimp'
Password:(your normal password here)
Reading package info...
Information about 147 packages read.
The following 14 additional packages will be installed:
 audiofile dlcompat esound giflib glib gnome-libs gtk+ imlib libjpeg libpng
 libtiff orbit xfree86-base zlib
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
...

If these instructions don't work for you, well, you'll have to take the time to read through the rest of this document and the online FAQ. You can also ask on the fink-users mailing list, but expect to be pointed back at the documentation when your problem actually is well-documented.

1.2 Update Fast Track

Start out by copying the fink-0.8.0-full.tar.gz file to your home folder. (Note: If you have OS X 10.4 and XCode 2.1, you should use fink-0.8.0-full-XCode-2.1.tar.gz instead, and make the appropriate changes below.) Then, open Terminal.app and follow the session below. Computer output is in normal face, your input is in bold face (or otherwise highlighted). The actual input prompts from the shell may vary, and some chunks of the output have been omitted (...).

[frodo:~] testuser% tar xzf fink-0.8.0-full.tar.gz
[frodo:~] testuser% cd fink-0.8.0-full
[frodo:~/fink-0.8.0-full] testuser% ./inject.pl /sw
sudo ./inject.pl /sw
Password:(your normal password here)
Copying package descriptions
...
Done.

Your Fink installation in '/sw' was updated with new fink packages.

[frodo:~/fink-0.8.0-full] testuser% cd pkginfo
[frodo:~/fink-0.8.0-full/pkginfo] testuser% ./inject.pl /sw
sudo ./inject.pl /sw
Copying...
...

Your Fink installation in '/sw' was updated with new package description
files. Use appropriate fink commands to update the packages, e.g. 'fink
update-all'.

[frodo:~/fink-0.8.0-full/pkginfo] testuser% cd
[frodo:~] testuser% rm -r fink-0.8.0-full
[frodo:~] testuser% fink update-all
...

2 First Time Installation

2.1 Requirements

You need:

2.2 Choosing A Directory

Before you install, you must decide where Fink's directory hierarchy will live. The recommended place is /sw, and all examples in this document will use that. Any other directory should be fine as well, as long as you don't use existing directories like /usr/local or /usr. The bootstrap script tries to catch these.

If you intend to use the binary distribution (through apt-get / dselect), you must install to /sw. Unfortunately, binary packages are not relocatable.

The directory that you choose must not contain any spaces or similar. Both Unix itself and the bulk of Unix software were written under this assumption. Using symlinks to trick the bootstrap script simply won't work.

A special note about /usr/local: While it is possible to install Fink in /usr/local (and the bootstrap script will let you do that after a confirmation), it is a bad idea. Many third party software packages install into /usr/local. This can cause severe problems for Fink, including overwriting files, dpkg refusing to install packages and strange build errors. Also, the /usr/local hierarchy is in the default search path for the shell and the compiler. That means that it is much more difficult to get back to a working system when things break. You have been warned.

2.3 Installation

First, you need to unpack the fink-0.8.0-full.tar.gz tarball. (Note: If you have OS X 10.4 and XCode 2.1, you should use fink-0.8.0-full-XCode-2.1.tar.gz instead, and make the appropriate changes below.) It is recommended that you do this from the command line - StuffIt Expander has a tendency to screw up text files. So, go to the directory where you put the tarball, and run this command:

tar xzf fink-0.8.0-full.tar.gz

You now have a directory named fink-0.8.0-full. Change to it with cd fink-0.8.0-full.

The actual installation is performed by the perl script bootstrap.pl. It is accompanied by a small shell script, bootstrap.sh, which checks some basic requirements and then hands over control to the perl script. So, to start installation, go to the fink-0.8.0-full directory and run this command:

./bootstrap.sh

After running some tests, the script will ask you what method should be used to gain root privileges. The most useful choice is 'sudo'. On a default install of Mac OS X, sudo is already enabled for the user account created during installation. The script will immediately use the method you choose to become root. This is required for the installation.

Next, the script will ask you for the installation path. See 'Choosing A Directory' above for hints about this. The script will create the directory and set it up for the bootstrap that will be done later.

Next up is Fink configuration. This consists mainly of setting proxies and selecting mirror sites for downloading. The process should be self-explaining. If you don't know what to say, you can just press Return and Fink will use a reasonable default value.

Finally, the script has enough information to conduct the bootstrap process. That means it will now download, build and install some essential packages. Don't worry if you see some packages being compiled twice. This is required because to build a binary package of the package manager, you first must have the package manager available.

2.4 Getting X11 Sorted Out

Fink uses virtual packages to declare dependencies on X11. As there are several X11 implementations available for Mac OS X (XFree86, Tenon Xtools, eXodus) and several ways to install them (manually or via Fink), there are several actual packages - one for each setup. Fink is quite bad at guessing what you have, so it's best to get this sorted out right at the beginning. Here is a list of the available packages and installation methods:

For more information on installing and running X11, refer to the online X11 on Darwin and Mac OS X document.

3 Upgrading From Fink 0.3.x

If you already have Fink 0.3.x installed, you can update your installation to 0.8.0 with the built-in 'selfupdate' command.

3.1 Updating The Package Manager

To update Fink, run the following command:

fink selfupdate

This will automatically update your existing Fink installation to use the latest package manager, and also update all essential packages. However, it will not update any other packages.

3.2 Getting tetex Sorted Out

If you are upgrading from a Fink release prior to 0.3.1, and you have tetex installed, you should run the command "fink remove tetex" before upgrading. (It may also be necessary to remove the packages which depend on tetex, such as lyx, before tetex can be removed.) Afterwards you can again install tetex and the other packages you removed.

3.3 Updating Packages

The above updating steps will not update the actual packages, they only provide you with the means to do so. The easiest way to get the new packages is to use the 'update-all' command:

fink update-all

This will bring all installed packages to the latest version. If you don't want to do this (it may take some time), you can update individual packages with the 'update' command.

4 Upgrading From Fink 0.2.x

If you already have Fink 0.2.x installed, you can update your installation to 0.8.0 with this package.

Actually, there are two pieces that are updated independently: the package manager and the package descriptions. It is recommended to update the package manager first.

4.1 Updating The Package Manager

To update the package manager, run the inject.pl script in the fink-0.8.0-full directory, like this:

./inject.pl

It will try to locate your Fink installation automatically. If it can't find it, you can pass the path as a parameter, like this:

./inject.pl /sw

The script copies the package descriptions into the appropriate directory, creates tarballs in /sw/src and then runs fink to install the new versions of the fink and base-files packages. (Yes, that means that fink updates itself. :-) )

4.2 Updating The Package Descriptions

If you downloaded the fink-0.8.0-full tarball, the package descriptions are in the subdirectory pkginfo. To install them, run the inject.pl script in that directory:

cd pkginfo
./inject.pl

This inject.pl script works just like the one for the package manager.

You can also grab the package descriptions as a separate tarball, packages-0.8.0. If you did that, just unpack it and run the inject.pl script inside.

As a third alternative, you can have Fink automatically update itself to the latest set of package descriptions by issuing the following command:

fink selfupdate

4.3 Getting X11 Sorted Out

The first thing you should do after updating the package descriptions is getting the X11 dependencies settled (unless you already did that after upgrading to 0.2.3). Refer to the "Getting X11 Sorted Out" section under "First Time Installation" above.

4.4 Updating Packages

The above updating steps will not update the actual packages, they only provide you with the means to do so. The easiest way to get the new packages is to use the 'update-all' command:

fink update-all

This will bring all installed packages to the latest version. If you don't want to do this (it may take some time), you can update individual packages with the 'update' command.

4.5 Other Notes

IMPORTANT! When you update from Fink 0.2.0 or a CVS version before 0.2.1, the first thing you should do after running the inject.pl scripts is this:

fink update dpkg

There was a bug in dpkg that could lead to partially extracted packages. If you had unusual trouble with installed packages, especially missing symlinks, use 'fink reinstall' on them to re-install the .deb package files.

5 Upgrading From Fink 0.1.x

5.1 Clean cut

There is no direct upgrade path from Fink 0.1.x to Fink 0.2.x, because they use different methods for underlying package management (stow vs. dpkg). The only way to upgrade is to do a complete reinstall. The procedure is as follows:


Copyright Notice

Copyright (c) 2001 Christoph Pfisterer, Copyright (c) 2001-2006 The Fink Project. You may distribute this document in print for private purposes, provided the document and this copyright notice remain complete and unmodified. Any commercial reproduction and any online publication requires the explicit consent of the author.


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