Fink

User's Guide - 3. Installing Packages

Now that you have something that can be called a Fink installation, this chapter shows you how to install the actual software packages you came for. Before we explain how to install packages using either the source or the binary distribution, some important notes that apply to both.

3.1 Installing Binary Packages with dselect

dselect is a program that lets you browse the list of available packages and select which ones you want installed. It runs inside Terminal.app, but takes over the whole "screen" and uses simple keyboard navigation. Like the other package management tools, dselect requires root privileges, so you should use sudo (from an account with administrator privileges): 

sudo dselect

Note: dselect has known difficulties with the Mac OS X Terminal application. You should run the following commands before using it, or put them in the appropriate startup file (e.g. .cshrc / .profile):

bash users:

export TERM=xterm-color

tcsh users:

setenv TERM xterm-color

The main menu has several choices:

You'll spend most of your time with dselect in the package browser, reachable through the "[S]elect" menu item. Before dselect shows you the package list, it presents you with an introductory help screen. You can press 'k' to get a full listing of keyboard commands, or just Space to get to the package list.

You can move through the list using the up and down keys. Selections are made with '+' and '-'. When you select a package that needs some other packages, dselect will show you a sublist with the affected packages. In most cases you can just press Return to accept dselect's choices. You can also make adjustments in the sublist (e.g. to choose another alternative for a virtual package dependency), or press 'R' (i.e. Shift-R) to return to the previous state. Both the sublists and the main package list are left by pressing Return. When you're happy with your selections, leave the main list and use the "[I]nstall" menu item to actually install the packages.

3.2 Installing Binary Packages with apt-get

dselect doesn't actually download the packages itself. Instead, it runs apt to do the dirty work. If you prefer a pure command line interface, you can access the functions of apt directly, with the apt-get command.

Like with dselect, you must first download the current listing of available packages with this command: 

sudo apt-get update

Like the "[U]pdate" menu item in dselect, this doesn't update the actual files on your computer, just apt's list of available packages. To install a package, you just give apt-get the name, like this: 

sudo apt-get install lynx

If apt-get determines that the packages requires other packages to be installed, it will show you the list and ask for confirmation. It then downloads and installs the requested packages. Removing packages is just as easy: 

sudo apt-get remove lynx

3.3 Installing Dependent Packages that are Unavailable in the Binary Distribution

Sometimes, when doing a binary install, you may get messages that a dependency can't be installed. e.g.:

Sorry, but the following packages have unmet
dependencies:
foo: Depends: bar (>= version) but it is
not installable
E: Sorry, broken packages

What has happened is that the package you are trying to install depends on another package that can't be distributed as a binary, due to licensing requirements. You must install the dependency from source (see the next section).

3.4 Installing Binary and Source Packages with fink

The fink tool will allow you to install packages that are not yet available in the binary distribution.

First of all, you'll need an appropriate version of the Developer Tools for your system. The latest version is available for free download after registration at http://connect.apple.com.

To get a list of packages that are available for installation from source, ask the fink tool: 

fink list

The first column lists the installation state (blank for not installed, i for installed, (i) for installed but not the latest version), followed by the package name, the latest version, and a short description. You can ask for more information about a specific package using the "describe" command ("info" is an alias for this): 

fink describe xmms

When you have found a package that you want to install, use the "install" command: 

fink install wget-ssl

The fink command will first check if all necessary prerequisites ("dependencies") are present, and will ask you if it's okay to install them if some are missing. Then it goes ahead and downloads source code, unpacks it, patches it, compiles it, and installs the results on your system. This can take a long time. If you run into errors during that process, please first check the FAQ.

You can tell fink to try to download pre-compiled binary packages, if available, instead of building them. Just pass the --use-binary-dist (or -b) option to fink. This can save you a lot of time. E.g. calling 

fink --use-binary-dist install wget-ssl

or

fink -b install wget-ssl

will first download all dependencies for wget-ssl that are available from the binary distribution and only build the remainder from source. This option can also be enabled permanently in the Fink configuration file (fink.conf) or by running the command fink configure.

More details about the fink tool are available in the chapter "Using the fink Tool from the Command Line".

3.5 Fink Commander

Fink Commander is an Aqua interface to both apt-get and the fink tool. The Binary menu lets you do operations on the binary distribution, and the Source menu does the same thing for the source distribution.

Fink Commander is included with the Fink binary installer. To download it separately (e.g. if you've bootstrapped Fink from source), or for additional information, visit the Fink Commander website.

3.6 Available versions

When you want to install a package, you should first check the package database and see if it is available at all through Fink. The available version(s) of the package will be shown in several rows of a table. These are:

3.7 Getting X11 Sorted Out

Many of the packages that are available via Fink require the installation of some form of X11. Because of this, one of the first things that is typically done is to choose an X11 implementation.

Since there are several X11 implementations available for Mac OS X (Apple's X11, XFree86, X.org) and several ways to install them (manually or via Fink), there are several alternative packages - one for each setup. Here is a list of the available X11 packages and installation methods:

For more information on installing and running X11, refer to the X11 on Darwin and Mac OS X document.

Next: 4. Upgrading Fink