Just found out Ports/Fink is not the same

[Jeremy Huddleston]

One of the major differences between the two is the decision of whether or not to use system-provided libraries that change across major OS versions or to build our own copies.  fink tries its hardest to make use of system-provided libraries, but they run into trouble because of changes between OS versions.  For example, Tiger's X11 is much older than Leopard's and Snow Leopard's.  Tiger's was based on XFree86, and Leopard's was based on X.org's modular packages with pkg-config support.  It's not trivial to get modern X11 applications to build against Tiger's X11.  MacPorts avoids this problem by policy of using our own version of libraries rather than the system's.  This has the benefit of:

1) Consistency in the development environment
2) Consistency in the runtime environment
3) Ease of support within the MP community (mainly resulting from the above 2)
4) Quicker deployment of security fixes (don't need to wait for an Apple Security Update)

In addition to the above benefits, a lesser benefit is that you can run the latest software on EOL'd OSs.  For example, you can build the latest X11 server for Tiger (or maybe even Panther).

The argument for the alternative is less time building packages, less space used on your system, and less time managing ports for packages provided by the system.  Those don't seem as convincing to me.


On Sep 18, 2010, at 16:39, James Hozier wrote:

> I had no idea Ports and Fink were two different things. I'm relatively
> new to Mac products (but very familiar with Unix) so at first I thought
> that the Ports/Fink system was the same, and that both used the same
> repos/sources or whatever. However I discovered the two were different but
> Fink seems to be less active (I posted to their ML a couple weeks ago and
> nobody has responded yet). I'm very happy with MacPorts, but what exactly
> are the differences between Ports and Fink? (If possible a description in
> an unbiased POV)
> 
> 
> 
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