Fink is good, and needed, and when it gets better (and/or endorsed by Apple), I too will use it. Same goes for Perl 5.8.0.
In the meantime, kudos and all strength to the Fink developers who are perhaps at the stage where Perl was in its earlier versions. All these programs are (to paraphrase Paul Simon -- no, not the senator) better than they were, and worse than they'll be.
Cheers,
Puneet.
Daniel Stillwaggon wrote:
On Monday, Jan 13, 2003, at 17:52 US/Pacific, Rich & Michaela wrote:OK we're still seriously OT on this thread now, but here's my 2 cents. II think that there is a large segment of the user/admin population that is
guess I still don't get it (Fink). If you have modest admin skills you can
figure out dependencies and pre-reqs. I've yet to run into any dependency
issues (at least any that weren't addressed in README or INSTALL files). I
did do some binary installs of big UNIXy (X11) stuff and built others. So
my assessment is Fink is not needed for experienced UNIX users, but falls
far short of the sort of SW installer the non-UNIX OS X users really need.
missing from your estimation. You are forgetting about hobbyist users who
may want to download stuff and tinker with it. Fink provides a middle
ground where users can download software easily and in minimal steps.
They don't need to hunt for stuff and deal with libraries and dependencies,
but can still get to it to play around.
You are probably correct in that NIXy people aren't going to need it, unless
they have grown accustomed to apt-get from debian use or redhat's
packages. My bet is that there are far more than an handful of such
people out there.
The only thing that I would disagree with you on is your statement
that fink falls short of useful for the non NIXies. My question is, why
would these people be playing with the Unix software at all?
It seems to me that opening up the command line entails a certain
willingness to deal with these issues.
In a vain attempt for relevancy, once someone starts doing Perl coding
they have already signed themselves up for the headaches that may
or may not come from libraries and dependencies. That is part of
the game and the only way to avoid it is not to play at that level.
Sorry if this sounds disjointed or confrontational, that was not my
intent (though my head-cold seems to be interfering with my ability to
write coherently). I only wanted to point out that software installation at
the command-line level (much like advanced Perl), is not an easy thing
and there is really no reason to pretend that it is/can/should be
easy.
------------------------------------------------------------------------ -
Daniel C. Stillwaggon
([EMAIL PROTECTED])
