After using fink for more than a year, and despite some problems from time to time, I thought I understood how to use it and how to fix little problems.
With the change to 10.3 and the latest versions of fink there has been nothing _but_ problems. Installing packages produced files in my /sw directory with foreign owner and group IDs every time (I found I had to fix permissions after any attempt to install software); fink refused to recognize Apple's X11 and SDK, though I reinstalled fink, X11 and the SDK three times from zero, each time meticulously following the skimpy directions. Finally, trying to build any of the KDE packages led to messages about missing symbols - and failure. Even trying binary packages just led to strange behavior like amaya starting up, staring at me for a few seconds, and then going away without a whimper. About the only thing that did work was the binary installation of abiword.
I wrote to more than one maintainer, who tried to be helpful, but got nowhere. I read this group's archives and found notes and suggestions about perl5 auto, bundles, force-removing things and trying again. None of it got me any further.
There's nothing wrong with my X11 installation. It comes up, I can run programs.
Perhaps this isn't all this project's fault and there's something wrong with my installation, but I have no way to find that out, and I don't have problems with other BSD/UNIX software. I'll check in again some time in the future to see if things have improved but right now I'm giving Darwin Ports a whirl and so far it's working better, though the interface is simpler and more limited and the number of packages is a great deal less.
I know I'm not the only one having serious problems based on what I read. I hope you all can fix this and make fink a productive project again.
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Barry Abrahamsen
Seattle, Washington
http://www.abrahamsen.com/
http://www.AmericanBamboo.org/
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