On Fri, 24 May 2002, Rob Randall wrote:

> In an absurd effort to fix my Gnome/Sawfish no icom problem (since fixed) I
> went to the Fink website and typed in my terminal "fink selfupdate-cvs" then
> "fink update-all" . My computer was busy for next 15 hours or so with all
> manner of data flying across my terminal window.

I do the exact same thing almost every day :)

With the first command, you brought your local copy of the catalog of
available packages up to date. With the second, you downloaded, built,
and installed everything that was now out of date.

Depending on what kind of computer you're running (old iMac, new G4, etc)
and what you're installing (the number & the kinds of packages: mozilla,
nautilus, evolution, and gnome all take a long time, while others can be
very fast) this can be done in a matter of minutes or it can take well
over a day. On my old iMac (233 mhz G3, 160 mb ram), Mozilla took close to
24 hours to update; on my new G4 (450 mhz G4, 300 mb ram) it takes maybe
1/4 that time (haven't timed it but that's close to the difference).

When you download a binary, you skip the longest & slowest steps of the
installation process -- configuring the source to build properly (usually
around 5-10% of the build time) and actually building it (around 90-95%),
and just skip from downloading a package to unpacking it on your system.
The tradeoff is that source installs usually get you newer software, and
if you can leave it building in the background or overnight, it's not a
big deal for it to take a while...


--
Chris Devers                                [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Apache   /   mod_perl   /   Boston.com systems administrator

  Help bring Connector to OSX:  PetitionOnline.com/osximian

"More war soon. You know how it is."    -- mnftiu.cc


_______________________________________________________________

Don't miss the 2002 Sprint PCS Application Developer's Conference
August 25-28 in Las Vegas -- http://devcon.sprintpcs.com/adp/index.cfm

_______________________________________________
Fink-users mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fink-users

Reply via email to