Re: emacs for Mac OS 10.3.1

[westin*nospam@graphics.cornell.edu (Stephen H. Westin)]

Hugh Wolf <hwolf@deutsches.lieder.de> writes:

> On 2003-11-21, Stephen H. Westin <westin*nospam@graphics.cornell.edu> wrote:
> > I still haven't figured out the point to Fink. 
> 
> The main reason is version control and dependency management.  It's
> just like using dselect etc in Debian or rpm in Redhat.  It makes no
> sense at all to build straight from tars imo if you have a good
> software package manager available.
> 
> An important secondary reason in because lots of unix packages need
> minor adjustments to build and/or run in osx, and the kind volunteers
> at fink have already created the .patch files for the rest of us to
> use.
> 
> Thirdly, in many cases prebuilt fink binary packages are available
> for download.  Why build it yourself if it's already been done for
> you in a sensible way?
> 
> 
> All in all, why would you _not_ want to use fink?

Because it puts everything in a strange place where it isn't found by
most normal open-source software builds.

> What advantages
> are you gaining by building everything manually yourself?  I can't
> think of any.

Well, I was exposed to Fink in trying to port code from Linux. When I
went to build, say, libgphoto2, everything was broken, using the wrong
version of utilities, etc.

There are plenty of open-source projects, including Emacs, that have
integrated the Mac port into the main source tree and build procedure.

-- 
-Stephen H. Westin
Any information or opinions in this message are mine: they do not
represent the position of Cornell University or any of its sponsors.