Getting your fink installation to use packages that I have pre-compiled

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Contents


Please Note: I only have packages available for 10.5.x

I have no way to update or trouble-shoot older operating system versions. Sorry.

  • I have a "live" (continuously updated) set of packages now for intel and a separate set for ppc. Do not mix them up.


Jump-start

I've backed up my 10.5.4 /sw directories for intel and ppc which you might be able to use if what is described below is problematic. I have no way to troubleshoot this.

For PowerPC and Intel Macs running OS X 10.5.x:

Introduction

This page describes how to get your current fink installation to look to mine for packages that I have pre-compiled. There are two reasons you might want to do this. The first is that fink officially only distributes pre-compiled binary (debian) packages for a subset of packages, i.e., those in the "stable" branch that have unrestricted licenses like GPL and LGPL. For that reason, none of the crystallography programs are distributed in pre-compiled form officially by fink. (Almost all of them are in the "unstable" branch of fink and many have restrictive licenses.) The second reason is that I have made some packages that are not available officially in fink. CNS is one such example. These are packages that exist in my personal "local" branch.

How-To

Here is all you need to do to configure your fink installation to automatically install my pre-compiled fink packages for crystallography (and other) programs. If you would rather manually install one or two packages, follow the linked example (in general a bad idea).

Before you begin

Please do the following three things in the order below:

1. Update to 10.5.4 (or the most current OS X release).

2. Make sure you have Xcode 3.0 or newer.

3. Install the latest X11 from here: http://xquartz.macosforge.org/trac/ (The one originally distributed with 10.5 is badly broken).

Install Fink at /sw (default basepath).

This is what happens normally when you install the fink binary. Follow the directions on that webpage.

Edit the file /sw/etc/fink.conf

You will have to activate the "unstable" branch of fink to do anything useful. ("Unstable" is paranoia-speak for "current".)

To do so, edit the file /sw/etc/fink.conf and add the final two entries to the line "Trees" so that it looks like this:

Trees: local/main stable/main stable/crypto unstable/main unstable/crypto

Update Fink Immediately

Be sure to issue all of the following commands:

fink selfupdate-rsync

or, alternatively

fink selfupdate-cvs

Make sure that worked. You should see a long string of output. On some restricted servers (like our campus wireless) this won't work. So pay attention to the output.


fink scanpackages; fink index
fink update-all

Then, if you don't already have fink local directories, do this (it can't hurt, even if you never make use of this):


sudo mkdir -p /sw/fink/dists/local/main/finkinfo

sudo mkdir -p /sw/fink/dists/local/main/binary-darwin-powerpc

Run fink configure and enable the option to download packages from the binary distribution

Alternatively, you can edit the /sw/etc/fink.conf file and put the line

UseBinaryDist: true 

at the bottom of the file.

Edit the file /sw/etc/apt/sources.list

and add the following sets lines to the bottom of that file:

Specific to 10.5

Use this only if you are running 10.5.X on intel.

sources.list for 10.5 intel only

or

sources.list for 10.5 ppc only

For 10.4 and earlier?

Sorry. I can no longer distribute ppc 10.4 packages.'

Run the following four commands:

fink scanpackages
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
fink scanpackages

Install or update programs as with the following examples:


fink -b install ccp4

fink -b install coot
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

The first command installs or updates ccp4, the second installs or updates coot, and the third command updates (or upgrades) all the packages to the most currently available version. "fink -b install" essentially means use "sudo apt-get install" where possible, and then build anything missing from the binary distribution that is needed as a dependency. So "fink -b install" is slightly more robust and foolproof than "sudo apt-get install"

These instructions are modified from those available in Fink's documentation.


Note to G4 PPC users

The package gmp that is built on my G5 PPC is incompatible with G4 processors. You will have to force-rebuild it manually:

fink rebuild gmp
fink reinstall gmp gmp-shlibs

This bug causes coot to fail when running the "tips-gui.scm" file.

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