The Fink project is an effort to
port
A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as Hamburg, Manch ...
and package
open-source Unix programs to
macOS
macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...
. Fink uses
dpkg and
APT (
Debian
Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...
's
package management system), as well as its own frontend program,
fink (which is implemented as a set of
Perl modules).
Implementation
Fink features a binary distribution for quick and easy installation using APT, as well as a more extensive source distribution. In addition to
command-line tools for handling packages, the
shareware app Phynchronicity provides a
GUI.
Fink can be used to install newer versions of packages installed by macOS or to install packages not included in macOS by Apple edict. Fink stores all its data in the directory
/opt/sw for newer macOS releases and
/sw for macOS 10.14 and earlier (although this can be changed if initially compiling fink itself from source code). This goes against the
Filesystem Hierarchy Standard's recommendation to use the
/usr/local prefix
A prefix is an affix which is placed before the stem of a word. Particularly in the study of languages, a prefix is also called a preformative, because it alters the form of the word to which it is affixed.
Prefixes, like other affixes, can b ...
; the reasons given in the Fink FAQ are that other installers might overwrite Fink's files under
/usr/local, and that having an entirely separate directory makes it easier to disable the binaries and libraries that Fink installs.
MacPorts, another macOS package manager, follows a similar approach by storing its data in
/opt/local by default. Within Fink's directory, a FHS-like layout (
/sw/bin,
/sw/include,
/sw/lib, etc.) is used.
History
The Fink project was started in December 2000 by German
hacker
A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who achieves goals and solves problems by non-standard means. The term has become associated in popular culture with a security hackersomeone with knowledge of bug (computing), bugs or exp ...
Christoph Pfisterer.
The name Fink is
German for
finch and is a reference to the name of the macOS core,
Darwin;
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English Natural history#Before 1900, naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all speci ...
's study of diversity among finches led him eventually to the concept of natural selection.
Christoph Pfisterer left the project in November 2001. Since then, several people have stepped in and picked up support for Fink. As of March 2008, the project was managed by 6 administrators, 89 developers, and an active community. As of March 2014, the Fink core team were made up of nine active developers, who are responsible for the central management of the project and maintain the "essential" packages.
The Fink community regularly adds support for the latest versions of macOS with their release. Latest Fink versions, starting with version 0.45.0, support up to
MacOS Catalina. Support for
MacOS Big Sur
macOS Big Sur (version 11) is the seventeenth software versioning, major release of macOS, Apple Inc., Apple's operating system for Macintosh computers. It was announced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 22, 2020, and w ...
and
Monterey is being worked on.
See also
*
Gentoo/Alt
*
Homebrew
*
MacPorts
*
Pkgsrc
*
Cydia
References
External links
*
{{Package management systems
Dpkg
Free package management systems
Free software programmed in Perl
Perl software
Utilities for macOS
Software using the GNU General Public License