On 12/6/06, Philip Lamb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Personally, my one wish for Fink is better maintenance of FinkCommander. > > I would like to see some more of the Fink functionality moved into > FinkCommander. I know FinkCommander is officially outside the Fink > suite, but it shouldn't be. For anyone new to open source on the Mac, > having a GUI in which he or she can browse available packages, read > detailed info on each package, see what is installed, and manage > various Fink tasks is absolutely invaluable. I know many of you are > of the opinion that command line should be all you ever need, but for > new users, operating fink from the command line is intimidating, > imposes a steep learning curve, and masks a lot of great > functionality that is in Fink and its tools. > > Specifically, I would like to see FinkCommander handle some of these > tasks which I typically revert to the command line or manually > grepping through the fink tree for: > * Viewing dependencies and reverse dependencies of installed packages > (i.e. apt-cache info) - this helps answer the questions users have > like "why is this package installed when I only ever asked for > package xyz to be installed" and "can I remove this asdfg package"? > * Cleaning up obsolete sources and debs (used to work but broken with > the new fink cleanup syntax)
It's fixed again. > * Sending feedback.. more than just the "success" or "failure" > reports, but including (at user's option) key system info (e.g. OS > version, platform, environment etc) and build log. > * Allowing viewing of other fields in the package .info file > (currently shows only DescDetail), such as DescPort, and > DescPackaging, which almost always contain key info on what is > actually in the package (e.g. what features will be configured and > what features will not). > * Ability to report which package installed a given file or directory > in /sw (or wherever) - one of the dpkg or apt commands, but I can't > remember which. > * Updated binary of FinkCommander.. I have contacted the maintainters > offering to build a binary from the current cvs (which fixes several > bugs that are in the 0.5.4 binary release). > * Provide a mechanism for installing info and patch files into the > local tree, for testing. It would help speed up the package tracker a > lot if there was a simple GUI-mediated mechanism for users to > download .info and .patch files from the tracker and testing them. > > In short, it is scandalous that such a key tool in the Fink suite has > been neglected. I would venture that 99% of new Fink users depend in > some way on FinkCommander, and I think more attention needs to be > paid to its upkeep. If the previous authors aren't interested, then > they could at least turn over cvs write access to someone who is. > > Regards, > Phil. > > The previous author hasn't done anything on it in years. We've got some people with write access, and Martin Costabel has put a version in his experimental area. We won't stop anybody from taking it over. -- Alexander K. Hansen Fink Documenter (still) Got job? http://akhmac.blogdns.net/~hansen/akh_cv/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Fink-devel mailing list Fink-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fink-devel
