Mac OS X Leopard - ARCAism

2. If an official version is not available, check either Fink or MacPorts (you’ll most likely
want to pick one and stick with it) to see whether the application you are after is available.
Both Fink and MacPorts, once properly set up, will provide you with a way then to
download and install the application. These systems will also assure that any other
applications or libraries that the application depends on are installed as well and will
provide an effective way to upgrade the apps or uninstall them if you no longer need them.
3. If you need a highly customized version of an app, or want to sidestep Fink or MacPorts
for whatever reason, then you can download the source code and compile the application
yourself. This will assure that the app is good to go; however, if you go this route, you will
need to manually assure that all dependencies are covered, and all further maintenance of
the package will need to be made manually.
4. Installing a random precompiled binary should be a last resort and should generally be
avoided unless it comes from a trusted reliable source and it was compiled for your specific
system; that is, an application compiled for Tiger (OS X 10.4) might not work right on
Leopard (OS X 10.5). There are very few cases where this is recommended.
NOTE A good source of finding official binaries, or at least reputable ones, is from Apple’s
website at www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/unix_open_source/. Here Apple provides lots of
Unix and open source software and utilities to download.
MacPorts and Fink
As mentioned, the preferred way to get a large amount of Darwin goodness is through either
Fink or MacPorts. To take advantage of one of these, though, you first must choose which one
to use. In a side-by-side feature comparison, both of these come out pretty similarly. Fink, however,
offers binary installation and source installations, where MacPorts uses source installs all
the time. Fink also includes a GUI to install packages called Fink Commander. The main difference,
though, is how these programs actually do what they do. The Fink project is based on the
Debian packaging system from the Debian Linux Projects, while MacPorts is loosely based on
FreeBSD’s ports system.
Fink
Fink (http://finkproject.org/) was designed to bring the world of Unix to Mac OS X using tools
provided by the Debian Project. Fink is designed to keep everything it does relegated to the /sw
directory where it won’t interfere with any of the default Mac OS X settings or applications.
The easiest way to get started with Fink is to download the binary installer package from its
website and install it. During installation, Fink will prompt you for the administrator password
so it can add some paths to your $PATH. Once the installation package is done with its installation,
you should open your Terminal and issue the following commands to initialize Fink:
fink scanpackages; fink index
Once those two commands are finished running, before you start installing, you should make
sure Fink is up-to-date. If you have installed the Xcode Tools package (that is, Apple’s developers
tools), the best way to do this is to issue the following command:
fink selfupdate
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When prompted, select the rsync option (option 1). This will start a process of downloading,
compiling, and installing the latest version of Fink. Once it’s done, you’re good to go.
Table 19-4 lists some handy commands to work with Fink.