Talk:Fink (software)

Dict-def?

Fink is also a less than common last name which originates in Germany. Many immigrants brought the last name, which translated means "Finch" (as in bird), to the United States.

In the United States, “fink” is also a slang term, referring to a generally unpleasant individual, similar in use to “jerk.” It is also specifically used to describe strike-breakers (making it similar in use to the word “scab”), and to describe an informant (making it similar to the phrase “stoolpigeon.”)

While my evidence is purely anecdotal, as a native of Homestead, Pennsylvania I have heard since childhood that the term 'fink' originated during the Homestead Steel strike of 1892. Pinkerton detectives hired by Carnegie Steel to protect the plant were referred to as 'pinks'. They were so often referred to by strikers as the 'f***ing pinks' that the phrase soon became shortened to 'finks'. Other derogatory usage soon followed.Gperetich (talk) 23:38, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure but does this stuff, added by two anon IP users, belong here or does it count as dictionary definitions? AlistairMcMillan 04:41, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like maybe Fink should be made into a disambig, after the current content is moved to something like Fink (package manager)? (currently a red link). ~leif ☺ _(talk) 09:26, May 7, 2005 (UTC)

The meaning of Fink given in the article is correct. Please don't make it a disambig, unless you want to treat MacPorts & SourceForge similarly: it's difficult enough for a Mac user to find Fink! As for the name, its analogy to Darwin's finches is a good one; and Christoph Pfisterer wrote: ...Fink is the German name for Finch, a kind of bird. I was looking for a name for the project, and the name of the OS, Darwin, led me to think about Charles Darwin, the Galapagos Islands and evolution. I remembered a piece about the so-called Darwin Finches and their beaks from school, and well, that's it... . Fink FAQ For historical reasons, one might wish to use the respect shown in the following e-mail thread as an example of just one of the reasons Herr Pfisterer, and many more in the free software movement, lost enthusiasm, in writing applications for what were to be free operating systems; or, it could also serve to define 'Yankee Trader': Fink Project writes a Company (The company now sells free GNU GPL software for about $30 a download. How?) Geologist (talk) 03:15, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

References

Category

Fink is iin the Macintosh computers category, which makes no sense. I dont know how, but put it in the software for mac not made by apple category.

Founder quit

I feel the reason why the founder quit is not describes as it should in an encyclopedia: He left the project in November 2001 "after learning about the unthankfulness of people the hard way." Perhaps this should be rephrased. --Philippe 16:54, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

So rewrite it to sound better/more accurate/whatever. DMacks 15:00, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Done. Philippe 14:46, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Relevant topics

Initiated from the mailing list, I had a look at the page while thinking about improvements. Here my first impressions: Regarding the aim to attract users to fink as well as guide users, this is clearly not served with prime importance. There are two many details, that do not matter for a beginner and rather distract, whereas relevant topics are missing for beginners. The balance on the page with all of the sad history does not make you want to become involved or trust to use fink. I would put forward some FAQs of starting users. For example, it only states that fink does is not compliant with the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard. No explanation for this, nothing. It sounds like it is dangerous to install it. More on it later and maybe with improvements - mischi. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.48.167.194 (talk) 13:48, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

So I updated the page based on some of your comments, please review and let me know what you think. Knt (talk)

Note removed from article lead

This article is currently being reviewed and rewritten by Fink, see https://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=261fc33d0803191701m1e497b2m4d443bf7c1d654e8%40mail.gmail.com&forum_name=fink-devel for reference I removed this note from the article and am reproducing it here. --ascorbic (talk) 16:16, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Incorrect claims

I removed two claims from the article. First: "[the /sw prefix] can be changed when fink is first installed." Not true; I just installed Fink now to check, and while it lets me select what drive to install on, it automatically installs into '/sw' without any chance to change it. Question 5.4 of the Fink FAQ says that Fink must remain in '/sw' or it will stop working. Second: "This prevents fink from accidentally overwriting (or being overwritten by) files from OS X itself or from other vendors." A directory named '/sw' is not any more or less 'safe' than a directory named, for example, '/usr/local/fink', and trying to find a nonstandard place to hide your installation to "protect" it should not be a consideration in software development. - Brian Kendig (talk) 02:13, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Full-disclosure, I'm involved in the fink project...let me know if you want cites to avoid "because I know that's how it is":) The FAQ you linked explicitly says it's talking about "after installation", not when first installing fink. As to your test, the binary installer (.pkg bundle) I assume you used used is only one of several documented ways of installing fink. That's because you've merely downloaded and copied to your system a snapshot of an already-installed fink. If you build fink itself from source, you can pick an arbitrary prefix. In the bootstrap from source example you can see where /sw is explicitly passed. There is a whole "Choosing A Directory" section in the INSTALL doc in fink's own source that explains how to pick any prefix and why some are likely to be problematic.

Installing in /usr/local/fink isn't how FHS, other packaging systems (autotools), or apple's own compilers would use /usr/local anyway (they'd all use /usr/local/{bin,include,lib}), but users have reported no problems with prefix=/usr/local/fink. The intent here is to avoid any already-standard place. Given that fink is a package manager, it needs to manage its packages' files, knowing what version of what is where. It would be fine anywhere (see previous comments), but fink-managed packages quickly becomes unreliable if other systems/vendors/sysadmins add/remove/alter them. I strongly disagree that that attempting to hide from known "popular" locations of interference is not helpful in keeping fink free from that accidental interference. DMacks (talk) 05:36, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, we can put a mention in the article that the default location can be changed by compiling from sources. Question: Upon installing Fink to a different directory by compiling it (as in your example), can it then be used as normal to automatically install packages to this different directory, and there won't be any problems with binaries looking for libraries or support files in the nonexistent '/sw'? Or will this change require a recompile of every package installed, so that they look in the right place?

As for the directory choice, there are lots of apps which use their own subdirectories under '/usr/local' or '/usr/local/bin'. I still disagree that there's any more 'safety' obtained by putting the files under '/sw' than under, say, '/usr/local/fink'. The argument that 'other package managers would go in there and screw things up' doesn't make sense. (And I feel it's mighty presumptuous for a software application to want to create a new top-level directory for itself. It reminds me of so many Windows 98 apps installing directly under c:\ instead of into Program Files...)

This is an encyclopedia, not the place to debate design decisions about Fink, but if the encyclopedia presents rationales, then it should present sensible ones. Perhaps we should just find a canonic explanation for why '/sw' was chosen, and link to that as a reference. - Brian Kendig (talk) 14:13, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Has Fink died?

When trying to download FInk I find numerous broken links. I can not find any package to install Fink except for OSX 10.5 with the ability to upgrade from there. But this version does not install on later releases of OSX. It appears to me that Fink is nolonger an ongoing project, though I'd love to be proved wrong. FreeFlow99 (talk) 18:10, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Looks quite live on SourceForge. The given [fink.sf.net] website in the infobox on the article goes to a page with tons of package-updates each of the past few days--those links are dead because pdb.finkproject.org isn't to be responding but the actual package-manager itself still appears available on sf and it can download other items from sf as well. Are there any mailing lists or other fora where you can tell them about broken links? From the site, I see that for direct to 10.6 and beyond, there's a different installation process than downloading a normal OS X installer. DMacks (talk) 20:07, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Fink (disambiguation) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 01:15, 9 December 2018 (UTC)