Just found out Ports/Fink is not the same

[Ryan Schmidt]

> 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)

Indeed, MacPorts and Fink are two completely different pieces of software, though they have the same goal: make it easy to install UNIXy software on your Mac.

I used to use Fink, but when I upgraded from Panther to Tiger I found Fink wasn't ready for it and didn't work well with it. I switched to DarwinPorts, which became MacPorts, and I haven't been back to Fink since.


On Sep 19, 2010, at 12:08, Jeremy Huddleston wrote:

> 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).

Well, not with MacPorts, you can't, anyway; MacPorts itself won't compile on Panther anymore.