Fink

Download Fink Source Release

OS X 10.4 and later:

The source tarball contains the fink package manager. After you have installed it, you will be able to get package descriptions and patches. It will use these to download the source code from the original distribution sites or the Fink project's mirrors and build them on your local machine.

The current version, fink-0.45.6, was officially released on 19 February 2022.

You will need to install the proper Command Line Tools for Xcode for your system, (cf. the Quick Start page) which can be done as follows:

If you install the full Xcode on 10.7-10.15, you will also want to run:

sudo xcode-select -switch /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer

where you should replace /Applications with the actual path to the Xcode app.

You will need to run 

sudo xcodebuild -license
to accept the terms of the Xcode license in order for fink's build user to work.

Now unpack the 0.45.6.tar.gz archive if this hasn't been done automatically, e.g. via running the following commands in a terminal window (assuming the default download location--you'll need to match these commands to your own setup):

cd $HOME/Downloads

followed by

tar -xvf fink-0.45.6.tar.gz

or

tar -xvf fink-0.45.6.tar

where the choice depends on whether the source has already been partially unpacked, e.g. by Safari.

Then run the following commands in a terminal window:

cd fink-0.45.6
./bootstrap

to start the boostrapping operation, which will install the Fink base setup. If you would like to use a different location than the default /sw, you can do this via

./bootstrap /path

(replace /path with the directory you want to use).

After the installation is completed, running the command

/sw/bin/pathsetup.sh

will set up your environment for Fink (assuming you have installed Fink under /sw). If you open a new terminal window, the session will use these environment settings. Once you have installed fink and the other base packages, the command sequences:

fink selfupdate-rsync
fink index -f

or

fink selfupdate-git
fink index -f

will download the package description files and patches. rsync is generally preferable to git for most people.

Installation and usage instructions are inside the distribution tarball. Please read them - Fink is not a one-click-and-done thing. The documents README, INSTALL and USAGE are provided as pure text (for reading from the command line) and as HTML (for reading in a browser and for printing). They are also available online in the documentation section.

To be informed of new releases, subscribe to the fink-announce mailinglist.

OS X 10.5 point release:

The source point release contains the fink package manager plus package descriptions and patches. It will download the source code from the original distribution sites and build them on your local machine.

Fink 0.9.0 was officially released on 26 June 2008.

You will also need to install the Xcode Tools (c.f. the Quick Start page).

Unpack the tar.gz archive if this hasn't been done automatically, e.g. via

tar -xvzf fink-0.9.0-full.tar.gz

or

tar -xvf fink-0.9.0-full.tar

if it has already been partially unpacked, in a terminal window. Then, in a terminal window, change to the resulting fink-0.9.0 directory, and use

./bootstrap

to start the boostrapping operation, which will install the Fink base setup. If you would like to use a different location than the default /sw, you can do this via

./bootstrap /path

(replace /path with the directory you want to use).

After the installation is completed, running the command

/sw/bin/pathsetup.sh

will set up your environment for Fink (assuming you have installed Fink under /sw). If you open a new terminal window, the session will use these environment settings. Once you have installed fink and the other base packages, the command sequence:

fink selfupdate

using any either the rsync or git options, followed by

fink index -f

followed by

fink selfupdate-rsync

or

fink selfupdate-git

will download the package description files and patches, provided that you do not select the "point release" method initially. rsync is generally preferable to git for most people.

Installation and usage instructions are inside the distribution tarball. Please read them - Fink is not a one-click-and-done thing. The documents README, INSTALL and USAGE are provided as pure text (for reading from the command line) and as HTML (for reading in a browser and for printing). They are also available online in the documentation section.

To be informed of new releases, subscribe to the fink-announce mailinglist.