Fink - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Fink project is an effort to port

Porting

In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed...

and package open-source Unix

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

programs to Mac OS X

Mac OS X

Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...

. Fink uses dpkg

Dpkg

dpkg is the software at the base of the Debian package management system. dpkg is used to install, remove, and provide information about .deb packages....

and APT

Advanced Packaging Tool

The Advanced Packaging Tool, or APT, is a free user interface that works with core libraries to handle the installation and removal of software on the Debian GNU/Linux distribution and its variants...

(Debian

Debian

Debian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...

's package management system

Package management system

In software, a package management system, also called package manager, is a collection of software tools to automate the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing software packages for a computer's operating system in a consistent manner...

), as well as its own frontend program, fink (which is implemented as a set of Perl module

Perl module

A Perl module is a discrete component of software for the Perl programming language. Technically, it is a particular set of conventions for using Perl's package mechanism that has become universally adopted....

s).

Implementation

Fink features a binary distribution for quick and easy installation, as well as a source distribution for users preferring more flexibility. In addition to command-line tools for handling packages, FinkCommander provides a GUI. The user can configure Fink to utilize the stable or unstable tree for packages. The unstable tree typically has newer releases, but has not stood the test of time.

Fink can be used to install newer versions of packages installed by Mac OS X

Mac OS X

Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...

or to install packages not included in Mac OS X

Mac OS X

Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...

. Fink stores all its data in the directory "/sw" by default (though this can be changed if initially compiling fink itself from source code). This goes against the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard

Filesystem Hierarchy Standard

The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard defines the main directories and their contents in Linux operating systems. For the most part, it is a formalization and extension of the traditional BSD filesystem hierarchy....

's recommendation to use "/usr/local"; the reasons given in the Fink FAQ are that other installers might overwrite Fink's files under "/usr/local", and that having an entirely separate directory makes it easier to disable the binaries and libraries that Fink installs. Within Fink's directory, a FHS-like layout (/sw/bin, /sw/include, /sw/lib, etc.) is used.

History

The Fink project was started in December 2000 by German hacker Christoph Pfisterer.
The name Fink is German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

for finch

Finch

The true finches are passerine birds in the family Fringillidae. They are predominantly seed-eating songbirds. Most are native to the Northern Hemisphere, but one subfamily is endemic to the Neotropics, one to the Hawaiian Islands, and one subfamily – monotypic at genus level – is found...

and is a reference to the name of the Mac OS X core, Darwin

Darwin (operating system)

Darwin is an open source POSIX-compliant computer operating system released by Apple Inc. in 2000. It is composed of code developed by Apple, as well as code derived from NeXTSTEP, BSD, and other free software projects....

; Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...

's study of diversity among finches led him eventually to the concept of evolution.

Christoph Pfisterer left the project in November 2001. Since then, several people have stepped in and picked up support for Fink and as of March 2008, the project is managed by 6 administrators, 89 developers, and a very active community.
The Fink community released support for Mac OS X v10.4

Mac OS X v10.4

Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger is the fifth major release of Mac OS X, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. Tiger was released to the public on 29 April 2005 for US$129.95 as the successor to Mac OS X Panther , which had been released 18 months earlier...

on 18 Feb. 2006 and for Mac OS X Leopard on the day it was released (26 October 2007).

Implementation

History

See also