Hi all, I spent most of this morning trying to install Fink on one of my colleague computer. This made me realize how complicated it is for the end-user. Pretty much everything that could get wrong actually got wrong:
1 - It took us a while to get the correct XCode version for 10.6 on Apple developer website 2 - When we finally got the correct version, it failed to install because of this bug: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/45841/xcode-4-2-snow-leopard-doesnt-install 3 - Once we finally got Xcode installed, we installed Fink and we had to fight with proxy settings to get through my institute firewall. The default selfupdate (through rsync) would not work, and we had to switch to selfupdate-cvs. 4 - We tried to build a software package (gildas) that depends on many others (gtk+2, gcc4.6) and this failed because of libraries in /usr/local 5 - Now with /usr/local out of the way the compilation goes on but it will probably take a few more hours. A regular user would probably had given up before having Fink working. Therefore I think need to think about ways to make this easier for the end user. We've been discussing for a long time about distributing pre-compiled packages; we use to have a binary distribution but it has not been updated since 10.5. I understand that it is a lot of work for a single person to build all the packages to make a binary distribution. Another option would be that each package maintainer builds the package he/she maintains, signs it, and upload it on a server somewhere (that's what Debian is doing, I think). How difficult would it be to have something similar for Fink ? Cheers, Sébastien ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ Fink-devel mailing list Fink-devel@lists.sourceforge.net List archive: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.os.apple.fink.devel Subscription management: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fink-devel
