On Nov 11, 2006, at 12:23 PM, William Scott wrote: > 1. Is there in fact significant dissatisfaction? (Lots of people > use alternatives like MacPorts, but that doesn't mean that they have > all rejected fink. If someone uses an alternative, or does stuff > manually, as a matter of taste, I personally don't think we should > waste time worrying about this. If people are finding fink too obtuse > or cumbersome or out of date or limited or whatever, especially if > for reasons that are either a matter of perception or are easily > fixed, that is another matter.)
I am a package maintainer without repository access and have used fink exclusively since Christoph was leading the project. I only use the unstable tree because that is where the packages I need are located. My points: - It is a pain to get packages updated if you do not have repository access. Please do not take that as negative, when others have time they have helped me greatly and I have had to learn a lot about packaging. But the simple fact is that when I have time to devote to fink, others that I depend on to get packages posted don't. The result is that I usually put together the packages I need and do not get around to posting them to fink. I have limited time and if it is not easy to send my work back to fink, then it does not get done. - There is no clear process for getting repository access. - Fink has gotten way too complicated. In the beginning if I needed to install postgreSQL, fink installed one package. Now it is not uncommon to select one package to install and have it install many entries in the fink list (not including dependencies). For postgresql81 you have 3 packages, postgresql81, postgresql81-dev, and postgresql81-shlibs. For svn you have svn, svn-client, svn-dev, svn-doc, svn-shlibs . Who cares. I believe fink has sacrificed use- ability in order to micro manage dependencies. That said I am sure there are good reasons for the direction fink has taken, but why do I care if svn-doc is installed or not? Why do I care of svn-shlibs is installed or not. I don't. I don't even care of svn (server) is installed. Yet, if I remove a package guess what, I have to remove each one individually (and I know about the recursive option, but my job is not fink maintenance and I am unsure how it works and don't have time to make sure it does not screw up my computer). Personally, I am in the process of moving key packages to packaged installers in spite of that removing the best thing about fink. That is that everything is installed in /sw. There are 39 postgresql entries listed in the fink list. As a casual user how am I supposed to know what they all do. postgresql80 has 9, postgresql81 has 3. Why? Simply, I do not care where things are installed, only that they work. I do not care if I install a few extra MBytes of docs or a few KBytes of headers. With the size of hard disks these days I can't image this being of concern to anyone else. Install the files and get over it. If there are a few special cases, they can navigate to the directory and delete the headers or docs. Or someone could create a flag in the configuration that says "install headers" or "install docs". Either way its use-ability that fink needs. I want to be able to install one package or remove one package and fink should take care of everything else. In the fink list I should see one entry for each package I have asked fink to install and one entry for every dependency I have approved for installation. If we need 5 versions (you know -ssl etc.) then fink should asked me which options I want and install them with the one package. - The difficulty of using fink and the fact that more and more source trees are compatible directly with Mac OS X without fink make fink less relevant. Unless the use-ability is addressed I see this trend continuing. Fink should remove complexity for the end user, not add to it. - Micro-managing the dependancies means that you have to have a Ph.D. to write .info files. This also encourages less help. - I can't remember suggesting moving one of my packages from unstable to stable. Why? No one asked, no one provided any feedback, and having it unstable satisfies my needs. I would probably spend more time if I knew my packages were being used. Fink should have a method to track package use (not who, but if). The functionality should default to off and the fink team should encourage everyone to turn it on if they want better package maintenance. That way if no one is using a package, it could be dumped. And if a lot of people are using the package, I'm sure it would get more frequent updates. I know this sounds a bit negative, its not supposed to be. The fink team has done a great job and saved me countless hours of figuring out how to compile packages I needed. But it also takes honesty to improve. I use and will continue to use and contribute to Fink. Neil ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=120709&bid=263057&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ Fink-devel mailing list Fink-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fink-devel
