The Fink project is no longer able to offer support for users of Fink on Mac OS X 10.3. In reality there has been very little support for some time, so this announcement simply formalizes that fact.

This means that there will not be any further updates, not even security updates, for Mac OS X 10.3 users. Their existing installations will continue to work, but the software that is installed will not be updated.

We believe that the majority of our users are using Mac OS X 10.4 or 10.5 and hope that this does not inconvenience too many people.

The massive GNOME update which has been in process for many months was merged into fink's unstable tree.  This is well tested, and updates by users appear to be going fairly smoothly.

We are now merging the gnome update into the stable tree.  Because we have been unable to test the dependencies of these new packages in the stable tree in advance, users can expect the "stable" tree to be "not so stable" during the next few weeks, while the bugs get worked out.

If you are eager to start using this massive gnome update immediately, we suggest that you switch to the unstable tree.  If not, we suggest that you hold off running "fink selfupdate" for a while (perhaps a week or two) until things have again stabilized.

A new (binary) Fink release for OS X 10.5 (Leopard) is available today: version 0.9.0, which can be installed on either Intel or PowerPC hardware. The release includes source files, binary packages, and Fink installers for both kinds of hardware.

Users who have already installed Fink on Leopard from source, who now wish to switch to the binary distribution, may do so as follows. First, run fink selfupdate to update to the latest version of the fink package manager. Next, run fink configure, and be sure to change your choice about using the binary distribution from No to yes. Finally, run fink scanpackages to activate the binary distribution.

Update, 2008-07-11: If you use the binary installer, you should run fink selfupdate after installation.

Every large open source project has to face the problem of distribution and Fink is no different. We want you to get all the files you need to build your favourite application as quickly as possible. A mirror close to your location is a first step to achieving that.

We are actively working on building a reliable distribution infrastructure consisting of mirrors sponsored by universities and corporations. Recently our list of mirrors had to be shortened considerably and we need your help to improve its level of quality again.

Are you a student? Are you a professor? Do you run a Data Center? Are you a developer with free time to spare? Even if you cannot say yes to any of those questions you still might be able to help. All the relevant information on how to run and sponsor a mirror can be found on the FinkWiki. For specific questions you can contact us directly. We are looking for mirrors all over the world, but specifically in these countries:

We would like to take this opportunity to thank those who are already providing Fink with mirrors. Without your continued support Fink would not be able to provide the level of service it currently does. Thank you!

The fink website is not functioning correctly at present. (You may have noticed that many of the links on this page do not function correctly.) The fink team is working to resolve the problem as quickly as possible.

Update, 2008-01-13: The website is back to normal.

Users who want to update their Leopard X11 installation should make sure to download a Fink-friendly update to Xquartz. Users who have already applied the X11-2.1.0.1.pkg from macosxforge.org must download the Fink-compatible Xquartz for Fink to work properly. (Note: there is an X11-2.1.1.pkg release pending which will remove the need to patch your Xquartz. If you install X11 2.1.1 or later, do not apply the Xquartz patch.)

Update, 2007-12-11: The X11 2.1.1 release is now available on the Xquartz release page. Users who have already applied the X11-2.1.0.1.pkg and/or the patched Xquartz-1.3.0-apple-fink file from macosxforge.org should upgrade to 2.1.1 or greater for Fink to work properly. This release supercedes all previous releases, including the fink-specific Xquartz.

The Package Database web interface is presently down pending hardware and software upgrades. We are working on fixing the server as soon as possible. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Update, 2007-12-10: The Package Database is up and running again, with a few new features, including RSS support in the package browser.

The Fink Project announces initial support for Mac OS X Leopard (10.5).

10.5 users who are starting a new Fink tree will need to do this via bootstrap, until a binary distribution gets generated. Download fink-0.27.8 here.

The 10.4->10.5 update can be accomplished by running fink selfupdate to get fink-0.27.8 . If you're doing this on 10.5, make sure that you have Xcode 3.0 installed. After 10.5 is installed, run fink reinstall fink.

A direct 10.3->10.5 upgrade path isn't ready yet. If you're impatient to get going, you'll need to download the fink-0.27.8 tarball and bootstrap a new Fink tree as above.

Update, 2007-10-29: Users who have updated from 10.4 to 10.5 should note that using fink cleanup to remove .deb files will remove all of them. This issue should be resolved in the next update.

Update, 2007-11-03: fink-0.27.8 or later should solve the above issue as well as a couple of others that have come up.

Some users of fink's unstable tree are having sporadic difficulties at the end of building large packages, getting reports like tar: File changed as we read it which causes the .deb file not to be built.

The fink team is currently studying this problem to determine a permanent fix. For the time being, users experiencing this problem can work around it by issuing the command fink install tar-1.15.1-14. It may be necessary to issue that command after each fink update-all command, as well.

Once the fink team has determined how to solve this problem permanently, another announcement will be made here.

Update, 16 March 2007: The new version of fink's dpkg package resolves this problem. Unstable users can now run the update commands normally.

Update, 21 August 2006: The server has been restored.

The server which hosts four important fink services (the rsync update, the binary distribution, the "master mirror" of source files, and the package database) is down at the moment. We are hoping that the server will be restored as early as Monday, August 21, but are providing these workarounds for use during the period of outage.

To update fink, you must either select an rsync mirror other than the primary one (see the next paragraph), or use the command fink selfupdate-cvs. You only need to give this command once; subsequent updates will continue to be performed using CVS. When the server is restored, you can revert to rsync updating by means of the command fink selfupdate-rsync.

To work around the lack of the binary distribution, and the "master mirror" of source files, run the command fink configure. You should accept the default answers to all of the questions, except the following: when asked "Should Fink try to download pre-compiled packages from the binary distribution if available?" answer "no" (to disable the binary distribution); when asked if you want to change the mirror settings, answer "yes", and then you will be asked "What mirror order should fink use when downloading sources?". The answer is "2: Search Master Mirrors last" (to disable the automatic attempts to use the master mirror server). Finally, if you have decided to stick with rsync for updates, when asked to "Choose a mirror for 'RSync SelfUpdate'" you should choose one other than rsync://master.us.finkmirrors.net/finkinfo/. Unfortunately, other choices might not be available to you if you are in the U.S.

Finally, to use the package database during the outage, you can connect to this backup copy of the package database which is a few weeks out of date.

The "10.4-transitional" tree was created as an interim solution to the issues of incompatibilities between binaries made using GCC 3.3 (the default Mac OS X 10.3 compiler) and GCC 4.0 (the default Mac OS X 10.4 compiler). Now that the work to move Fink to using GCC 4.0 is essentially finished, we will be stopping official support of the "10.4-transitional" tree in favor of the "10.4" tree as of August 1st, 2006.

You should not need to do anything if "fink --version" prints "0.8.1.cvs" or "0.8.1.rsync".

As we mentioned previously, there are 2 ways to make the switch to the supported "10.4" tree.

The simplest way is to remove your Fink installation by deleting it and installing fresh using the 0.8.1 installer available from the download page.

Alternately, to preserve your Fink installation, download the upgrade script and read the README for instructions on how to upgrade your existing installation in-place. This will re-build your Fink installation from source, upgrading everything in the process. Be warned, it can take a lot of time, depending on your fink installation!

Feedback on the upgrade script has been very positive; many users have already made the switch. If you have problems, please feel free to mail your issues to the discussion lists.

Update, 2 June 2007. Due to changes to the behavior of sudo on 10.4.9, the update script needs a bit of assistance. Switching to a superuser prompt first via sudo -s will suffice.

Are you at OSCON 2006? Want to meet up?

Benjamin Reed (RangerRick on #fink) is at OSCON and is interested in meeting anyone who wants to hang out and talk about Fink, or even just meet for the heck of it.

Meet us in room F150 on Wednesday, July 26th at 8:30pm and we'll talk about Fink, Mac OS X, and anything else that takes our fancy.

Fink users on PowerPC machines are advised to update their copies of fink from the old "10.4-transitional" tree to the more recent "10.4" tree. We plan to discontinue the 10.4-transitional tree by the end of July, 2006.

Some background: along with OS X 10.4 came a new version of the g++ compiler (one of the workhorses of Fink), which produced code that was binary incompatible with previous versions. Fink, when using the 10.4-transitional tree, mixes the new gcc-4.0 compiler with the older g++-3.3 compiler. This strategy gave us some extra time to make packages compatible with g++-4.0. The time has now come to complete that transition, and rely exclusively on the newer tree. The update, however, is slightly complicated since all packages using or providing g++ libraries must be rebuilt in the correct order.

If you are using OS X 10.4, you can find out if you need to update your Fink installation by running the command fink --version. If the Distribution version is 0.8.1.cvs or 0.8.1.rsync, you do not need to update. However, if the Distribution version is 0.8.0.cvs or 0.8.0.rsync, you should update, as described below.

Many users will prefer to remove their fink installations and start anew with the 0.8.1 installer. Others will prefer to use the 10.4-update tarball (v. 0.4) (around 12 MB), which includes precompiled versions of the basic fink packages as well as a script which will attempt to update an existing fink installation. Please consult the README file which you will find within the 10.4-update directory (after unpacking the tarball) for further instructions.

Note: Fink users who are upgrading their systems from OS X 10.3 to OS X 10.4 can use the same two options to update their fink installations: they can either remove their old fink installations and start over, or they can use the same 10.4-update tarball. The update script should not be run until after OS X has been upgraded.

A new Fink release for OS X 10.4 (Tiger) is available today: version 0.8.1, which can be installed on either Intel or PowerPC hardware. The release includes source files, binary packages, and Fink installers for both kinds of hardware.

Fink on the Intel platform is still considered "beta" quality, and a number of packages (particularly packages in the "unstable" tree) either do not compile, or compile but do not run. Work to improve this situation is ongoing.

Fink users on PowerPC whose existing fink installation uses the 10.4-transitional tree (from the 0.8.0 distribution) may upgrade in one of two ways. The upgrade process is problematic, due to the change in ABI of g++ libraries which requires many libraries to be recompiled. Many users will simply wish to remove their fink installations and start anew with the 0.8.1 installer. Others may wish to use the new 10.4-update tarball (v. 0.3) (around 12 MB), which includes precompiled versions of the basic fink packages as well as a script which will attempt to update an existing fink installation.

As many Fink users are aware, the Fink CVS repository at sourceforge.net has not been fully functional since March 30. The anonymous CVS access has not been updated since then, and as of several days ago, the developers are also unable to update CVS in any form.

As we understand the current plans of sourceforge's staff (outlined briefly on their site status page), the old CVS servers will never be brought back in their current form. This is likely to mean disruption for fink users, but at present, we cannot say what form this disruption will take.

Our current advice to fink users is to switch to the 'rsync' method of updating (by running the command 'fink selfupdate-rsync'). This will at least give you a fink installation which is current up through May 7. If a full update to the new CVS situation turns out to be impossible via fink's normal selfupdate command, we will post instructions here on how to update when they become available.

Update 5/24/06: CVS is now functioning again, and users using the rsync method of selfupdating are getting up-to-date content. If you are using the cvs method, and can't (or don't wish to) switch to rsync, you should download the file fink-mirrors-0.24.15.2.tar.gz from the Sourceforge file release page, expand the file, and run the command ./inject.pl from within the fink-mirrors-0.24.15.2 directory. After this has been done, the fink selfupdate command should again work normally.