The Fink F.A.Q.

A: Nothing, it's just a name. It's not even an acronym.

Well, actually Fink is the German name for Finch, a kind of bird. I was looking for a name for the project, and the name of the OS, Darwin, led me to think about Charles Darwin, the Galapagos Islands and evolution. I remembered a piece about the so-called Darwin Finches and their beaks from school, and well, that's it...

A: Some main advantages:

• It's written in Perl, not make/shell. Thus it doesn't rely on special features only found in BSD make. There is no need to flag packages that need GNU make to build.

• dpkg provides sophisticated management for binary packages - smooth updating, special handling for configuration files, virtual packages and other advanced dependencies.

• Fink doesn't install into /usr/local unless explicitly requested and doesn't require fiddling with /usr/bin/make or other system-provided commands. That makes it safer to use and reduces interference with Mac OS X and third-party packages to a minimum.

A: There are several reasons, but the common line is "because breakage will occur".

Reason One: Third-party software. /usr/local is the well-established place to put software that is not part of the system shipped by the original vendor. This means that it is a good place to put stuff. However, it also means that other people will put stuff there, too. Most install routines will just overwrite what's there - this also applies to dpkg. One can, of course, choose not to install third-party software in /usr/local. Unfortunately, most installers don't tell you beforehand what they will install where.

Reason Two: /usr/local/bin is in the default PATH. This means that your shell will find the installed programs without additional measures. But it also means that you do have to take additional measures if you do not want to use the programs. In extreme cases, this can also affect the system itself - many parts depend on shell scripts.

Reason Three: The compiler tool chain searches /usr/local by default. The compiler searches /usr/local/include for header files and the linker searches /usr/local/lib for libraries. Again, this is sometimes a welcome convenience, but it's very hard to disable should the need arise. You can easily disable the compiler by putting a garbage file called stdio.h into /usr/local/include.

All that said, it is possible to install Fink into /usr/local. The installation script will warn you explicitly, but proceed once you acknowledge that you're doing this at your own risk.

A: That choice is quite arbitrary, but is likely to stay for the foreseeable future for practical (upgrade) issues as well as the fact that it's safe from conflicting with other packaging systems.

A: We're trying to. Sometimes sending patches back is easy and everyone is happy once the next release of the package is out. Unfortunately with most packages it's not that easy. Some common problems:

• The Fink package maintainer is very busy and doesn't have the time to send the patch and accompanying explanations to the upstream maintainers.
• The upstream maintainers reject the patch. There are lots of valid reasons for this. Most upstream maintainers have a strong interest in clean code, clean configure checks, and compatibility with other platforms.
• The upstream maintainers accept the patch, but it takes some weeks or months until they release a new version of their package.
• The package has been abandoned by the original authors and there will be no new releases into which the patch could be merged.

A: Fink mirrors are rsync servers mirroring the current and stable description files that Fink uses to build packages from source.

A: Rsync is a very fast protocol. It will update the description files faster than the old CVS update method. Furthermore, CVS updates are always done from sourceforge.net while rsync updates can be done from a mirror close to you.

A: All Fink mirrors are consolidated under the finkmirrors.net domain. The Web-Site at http://finkmirrors.net/ has more information.

A: Sometimes very strict firewalls forbid you to connect to rsync services. If that is the case simply continue using the CVS method

A: This is normal. The rsync update method will only update your active tree, e.g. 10.3, and it will also delete the CVS subdirectories.

A: By using fink selfupdate-rsync or fink selfupdate-cvs to switch to rsync or CVS, respectively.

A: Sometimes it is hard to fetch a certain version of sources from the Internet. Distfile mirrors hold and mirror the source packages needed by fink to build its source packages.

A: This is a current issue for people on OS 10.5 using the binary installer. Check your version:

fink --version

If you currently have fink-0.27.13-41, which is the version that comes with the installer, or fink-0.27.16-41, then there are a couple of options.

• rsync (preferred): Run the sequence below

  fink selfupdate
  fink selfupdate-rsync
  fink index -f
  fink selfupdate

• cvs (alternate): Run

  fink selfupdate-cvs
  fink index -f
  fink selfupdate

Either will bring you the newest fink version.

A: There is a timestamp issue with the libgettext3 package description: 0.14.5-2 is an outdated version. Run

fink index -f
fink update libgettext3-dev	
	

to update the package description cache and then the package.

A: There is a timestamp issue with the updated dpkg package description. Run

fink index -f
fink selfupdate
	

to update the package description cache and then to install dpkg and dpkg-base-files.

A: The fink command supports explicit proxy settings that are passed on to wget/curl. If you were not asked for proxies on first time installation, you can run fink configure to set it up. You can also run that command at any time to reconfigure the fink command. If you followed the instructions in the installation guide, and use /opt/sw/bin/init.csh (or /opt/sw/bin/init.sh), then apt-get and dselect also will use these proxy settings. Make sure that you put the protocol in front of the proxy, e.g.

ftp://proxy.yoursite.somewhere

If you are still having problems, go into System Preferences, select the Network pane, select the Proxies tab, and make sure that the box labeled "Use Passive FTP Mode (PASV)" is checked.

A: The package cvs-proxy can tunnel through HTTP proxies.

• Install the cvs-proxy package with the command:

  fink --use-binary-dist install cvs-proxy

• Switch to the CVS update method with the command:

  fink selfupdate-cvs

If fink is not configured to use your proxy, change the settings using:

fink configure.

A: No. Well, of course you can move the files using mv or the Finder, but 99% of the programs will stop working when you do. That's because basically all Unix software depends on hardcoded paths to find data files, libraries and other stuff.

A: Maybe. The general expectation is that it should work, but there may be hidden traps somewhere.

A: Almost all files installed by Fink are in /opt/sw (or wherever you chose to install it), except for a few exceptions. Thus, in order to get rid of Fink, enter this command:

fink remove --recursive daemonic xinitrc
sudo rm -rf /opt/sw
		

If you aren't planning to reinstall Fink you also will want to remove the "source /opt/sw/bin/init.csh" line you added to your .cshrc file or the "source /opt/sw/bin/init.sh" line you added to your .bashrc file, whichever is appropriate to your setup, using a text editor. If you had the xinitrc package installed, then you will want to restore the original /usr/X11/lib/X11/xinit/xinitrc, which has been backed up as /usr/X11/lib/X11/xinit/xinitrc.YYYYMMDDhhmm, i.e. the extension has a year, month, date, hour, and minute). If you have more than one of these, the original one normally does not mention sys-xinitrc-fink. Once you've found the right one, you can use

sudo mv /usr/X11/lib/X11/xinit/xinitrc.YYYYMMDDhhmm  \
	/usr/X11/lib/X11/xinit/xinitrc

replacing YYMMDDhhmm with the actual extension on your system.

A: First make sure you understand what 'unstable' means. Packages in the unstable tree are not in stable for any number of reasons. It could be because there are known issues, validation errors, or just not enough people giving feedback that the package works for them. For that reason, Fink doesn't search the unstable tree by default.

If you do enable unstable, please remember to e-mail the maintainer if something works (or even if it doesn't). Feedback from users like you is what we use to determine if something is ready for stable! To find out the maintainer of a package, run fink info packagename.

For fink-0.26 and later: If you run fink configure one of the questions will ask whether you want to turn the unstable trees on.

To configure Fink to use unstable when you have an earlier version of the fink tool than 0.26, edit /opt/sw/etc/fink.conf, and add unstable/main and unstable/crypto to the Trees: line.

If you use Fink Commander, then there is a Preference to use unstable packages.

None of these options actually download the unstable tree's package descriptions.You'll need to turn on rsync or cvs updating to do this, which is not set up by default on a new Fink installation. The following command sequence will set you up on a new Fink installation:

fink selfupdate

followed by

fink selfupdate-rsync

or

fink selfupdate-cvs

and then

fink index -f
fink scanpackages

Note: There are Fink Commander analogs for everything except fink index -f. You will have to use the command line for that.

If you're already set up with rsync or cvs updating, then the following command sequence (or the Fink Commander analogs) will suffice:

fink selfupdate
fink index
fink scanpackages
	

If you're not sure what your update method is, check fink --version in at a command line and see if that mentions cvs or rsync.

If you don't want to install any more from unstable than your specific package(s) and its (their) dependencies, (and any base packages that got updated) don't use the update-all command until you turn the unstable tree back off.

A: No, but it is highly recommended you do. Mixing and matching can cause unforeseen issues that make it difficult to debug problems when they do arise.

That said, if you only want one or two specific packages, and nothing else from unstable, then you need to switch over to CVS updating (i.e. use fink selfupdate-cvs), because rsync only updates the trees that are active in your fink.conf. Edit /opt/sw/etc/fink.conf and add local/main to the Trees: line, if not present. Then you'll need to run fink selfupdate to download the package description files. Now copy the relevant .info files (and their associated .patch files, if there are any) from /opt/sw/fink/dists/unstable/main/finkinfo (or /opt/sw/fink/dists/unstable/crypto/finkinfo) to /opt/sw/fink/dists/local/main/finkinfo. However, note that your package may depend on other packages (or particular versions) which are also only in unstable. You will have to move their .info and .patch files as well. After you move all of the files, make sure to run fink index, so that Fink's record of available packages is updated. Once you're done you can switch back to rsync (fink selfupdate-rsync) if you want.

A: If you're not paranoid, you can configure sudo to not ask you for a password. To do this, run visudo as root and add a line like this:

username ALL =(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

Replace username with your actual username, of course. This line allows you to run any command via sudo without typing your password.

A: init.csh and init.sh are not supposed to be run like normal commands. These files set environment variables like PATH and MANPATH in your shell. To have a lasting effect on the shell, it must be processed with the source command for csh/tcsh, or with the . command for bash/zsh, like this:

for csh/tcsh:

source /opt/sw/bin/init.csh

for bash/zsh:

. /opt/sw/bin/init.sh

A: You probably pointed apt at a Debian mirror, which of course doesn't have the Fink files. Use

fink configure

from a terminal window, go through all of the options to the mirror selection step, and then pick an apt-get repository mirror other than the default (which is your current setting). Then go through the rest of the options so that your change will be saved.

A: If this always happens, then you may have inadvertently modified (or failed to modify) your startup scripts. Run the /opt/sw/bin/pathsetup.sh script in a terminal window. This program will attempt to detect your default shell and add a command to load Fink's shell initialization script into your shell's configuration. You'll then need to open a new terminal session so that your environment settings are loaded. Note: Some older versions fink called this script pathsetup.command instead of pathsetup.sh. Alternately, you can run the pathsetup.app application on the Fink binary distribution disk image.

On the other hand, if you only have problems in the Apple X11 terminal, the easy solution is to modify the "Terminal" entry in the X11 Application menu via the Applications->Customize Menu... option. Instead of just

xterm

change the command field to read

xterm -ls

ls here means login shell, and the result is that your full login setup gets used (just like the OS X Terminal).

These /opt/sw/bin/init.* scripts do much more than just add /opt/sw/bin to your PATH. Many packages will not work correctly without these additional actions.

A: You can indeed do this. If you have the Development Tools installed, then you can run the following command:

sudo /Developer/Tools/SetFile -a V /opt/sw

This makes /opt/sw invisible, just like the standard system folders (/usr, etc.). If you don't have the Developer Tools, there are various third-party applications that let you manipulate file attributes--you need to set /opt/sw to be invisible.

A: There are issues between dselect and Terminal.app. A workaround is to enter the following command

tcsh users:

setenv TERM xterm-color

bash users:

export TERM=xterm-color

before you run dselect. You may want to put this in your startup file (e.g. .cshrc | .profile) so that it gets run all of the time.

A: If neither running fink selfupdate nor sudo apt-get update ; sudo apt-get dist-upgrade updates you to a newer Fink release, then you may need to download a newer version of the fink package manually. The relevant commands are:

• 10.3.x: (0.7.1 distribution)

  curl -O http://us.dl.sf.net/fink/direct_download/dists/fink-0.7.1-updates/main/binary-darwin-powerpc/base/fink_0.22.4-1_darwin-powerpc.deb
  sudo dpkg -i fink_0.22.4-1_darwin-powerpc.deb
  rm fink_0.22.4-1_darwin-powerpc.deb
  fink selfupdate

• 10.2.x: (0.6.3 distribution)

  curl -O http://us.dl.sf.net/fink/direct_download/dists/fink-0.6.3/release/main/binary-darwin-powerpc/base/fink_0.18.3-1_darwin-powerpc.deb
  sudo dpkg -i fink_0.18.3-1_darwin-powerpc.deb
  rm fink_0.18.3-1_darwin-powerpc.deb
  fink selfupdate

A: We recommend against putting your Fink directory tree inside a directory with spaces in its name. It's just not worth the hassle.

A: If you see something like the following:

Err file: local/main Packages 
File not found 
Ign file: local/main Release 
Err file: stable/main Packages 
File not found 
Ign file: stable/main Release 
Err file: stable/crypto Packages 
File not found 
Ign file: stable/crypto Release 
...
Failed to fetch file:/opt/sw/fink/dists/local/main/binary-darwin-powerpc/Packages
File not found 
Failed to fetch file:/opt/sw/fink/dists/stable/main/binary-darwin-powerpc/Packages
File not found
Failed to fetch file:/opt/sw/fink/dists/stable/crypto/binary-darwin-powerpc/Packages
File not found 
Reading Package Lists... Done 
Building Dependency Tree...Done 
E: Some index files failed to download, 
they have been ignored, or old ones used instead. 
update available list script returned error exit status 1.

then all you need to do is run fink scanpackages. This generates the files that aren't being found.

If you get an error of the following form:

W: Couldn't stat source package list file: unstable/main Packages
(/opt/sw/var/lib/apt/lists/_sw_fink_dists_unstable_main_binary-darwin-
powerpc_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)

then you should run

sudo apt-get update
fink scanpackages

to fix it.

A: When changing the Fink distribution (of which the source and binary distros are subsets), Fink needs to be told that this has happened. To do this, you can run a script that normally gets run when you first install Fink:

/opt/sw/lib/fink/postinstall.pl

Doing this will point Fink to the correct place.

A: Errors of the form:

gzip -dc /opt/sw/src/dpkg-1.10.9.tar.gz | /opt/sw/bin/tar -xf - 
### execution of gzip failed, exit code 139

or

gzip -dc /opt/sw/src/aquaterm-0.3.0a.tar.gz | /opt/sw/bin/tar -xf -
gzip: stdout: Broken pipe 
### execution of gzip failed, exit code 138

or

dpkg-deb -b root-base-files-1.9.0-1 /opt/sw/fink/dists/unstable/main/binary-darwin-powerpc/base

### execution of dpkg-deb failed, exit code 1
Failed: can't create package base-files_1.9.0-1_darwin-powerpc.deb

or segmentation faults when running utilities from fileutils, e.g. ls or mv, are likely to be due to a prebinding error in a library, and can be fixed by running

sudo /opt/sw/var/lib/fink/prebound/update-package-prebinding.pl -f

A: What happened is that somehow the OSX Terminal program has been told to run /opt/sw/bin/pathsetup.command every time you log in. You can fix this by removing the Preferences file, ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Terminal.plist.

If you have other preferences that you want to keep, you can edit the file with a text editor and remove the reference to /opt/sw/bin/pathsetup.command.

A: If your error looks like:

This first test is designed to die, so please ignore the error
message on the next line.
# Looks like your test died before it could output anything.
./00compile............................ok
./Base/initialize......................ok
./Base/param...........................ok
./Base/param_boolean...................ok
./Command/cat..........................ok
./Command/chowname.....................#     
Failed test (./Command/chowname.t at line 27)
#          got: 'root'
#     expected: 'nobody'

then you need to run Get Info on the drive/partition where Fink is installed and unselect the "Ignore ownership" button.

A: If you get an error that ends with

Failed: No mirror site list file found for mirror 'gnu'.

then most likely you need to update the fink-mirrors package, e.g. via:

fink install fink-mirrors

A: This error:

Failed: Can't move "/opt/sw/fink" out of the way.

is usually due, in spite of what it says, to permissions errors in one of the temporary directories that get created during a selfupdate. Remove these:

sudo rm -rf /opt/sw/fink.tmp /opt/sw/fink.old

A: If you see the following (so far only seen on OS 10.4):

No fonts found; this probably means that the fontconfig
library is not correctly configured. You may need to
edit the fonts.conf configuration file. More information
about fontconfig can be found in the fontconfig(3) manual
page and on http://fontconfig.org.

then you can fix it by running

sudo fc-cache

A: This message commonly means that you've tried to run the Fink installer as user who doesn't have administrative privileges. Make sure to log in at the login screen as such a user or switch to such a user in the Finder (i.e. fast user switching) before starting the Fink installer.

If you're having trouble even when using an admin account, then it's likely a problem with the permissions on your top-level directory. Use Apple's Disk Utility (from the Utilities sub-folder in your Applications folder), select the hard drive in question, choose the First Aid tab, and press Repair Disk Permissions. If that doesn't work, then you may need to set your permissions manually via:

sudo chmod 1775 /	  
	

A: Read the docs next time. To compile packages from source, you must install the Developer Tools, which among other stuff contains the C compiler, cc.

A: You need to install the Developer Tools.

A: if your message is of the form

make: command not found

or

Can't exec "make": 
No such file or directory at /opt/sw/lib/perl5/Fink/Services.pm line 190.

It means you need to install the Developer Tools.

On the other hand, if your error message looks like

make: illegal option -- C

then you've replaced the GNU version of the make utility installed as part of the Developer Tools with a BSD version of make. Many packages rely on special features only supported by GNU make. Make sure that /usr/bin/make is a symlink to gnumake, not bsdmake. Furthermore, make sure that /usr/local/bin/ does not contain another copy of make.

A: If you're seeing this:

Unknown option: 1 Usage: head [-options] <url>...

followed by a list of option descriptions, you have a broken head executable. This happens when you install the Perl libwww library on an HFS+ system volume. It tries to create a new command /usr/bin/HEAD, which overwrites the existing head command because the file system is case-insensitive. head is a standard command used in many shell scripts and Makefiles. You need to get the original head executable back if you want to use Fink.

The bootstrap script of the source release now checks for this, but you can still run into it if you use the binary release for first-time installation or install libwww after you installed Fink.

This problem has also been reported due to the installation of /opt/sw/bin/HEAD (not by any Fink package). This is easier to solve: rename /opt/sw/bin/HEAD.

A: This occasionally happens with splitoff packages (i.e. the ones with -dev, -shlibs, etc.) when a file gets moved from one part of the splitoff to another (e.g. from foo to foo-shlibs. What you can do is overwrite the file with that from the package you are trying to install (since they are nominally the same):

sudo dpkg -i --force-overwrite filename
        

where filename is the .deb file corresponding to the package that you are trying to install.

A: If you have StuffIt Pro installed, it could be that you have "Archive Via Real Name" mode enabled. Check for a StuffIt preference pane in the System Preferences tool, and disable "ArchiveViaRealName" if it's enabled. It contains a buggy reimplementation of a few important system calls that will cause a number of strange and transient errors such as this.

Otherwise, an mv error typically means that another error happened earlier in the build, but the build process didn't stop. To track down the offending file(s), search in the output of the build for the nonexistent file, e.g. if you have something like:

mv /opt/sw/src/root-foo-0.1.2-3/opt/sw/lib/libbar*.dylib \
/opt/sw/src/root-foo-shlibs-0.1.2-3/opt/sw/lib/ 
mv: cannot stat `/opt/sw/src/root-foo-0.1.2-3/opt/sw/lib/libbar*.dylib': 
No such file or directory 
### execution of mv failed, exit code 1 
Failed: installing foo-0.1.2-3 failed

then you should look for libbar somewhere further back in the output of your build attempt.

A: These errors look something like this:

Failed: Internal error: node for system-xfree86 already exists

This problem is that the dependency engine is confused, due to changes in some of the package info files. To fix it:

• Remove the offending package by force, e. g.

  sudo dpkg -r --force-all system-xfree86

  for the example given above.

• Try again to install | upgrade. At some point a "virtual dependency" prompt will come up that includes the package you just removed. Select it, and it will be reinstalled during your build.

A: This is a frequent source of problems, because the package configuration script finds headers and libraries in /usr/local and decides to use them rather than using those in the Fink tree. Often, such errors will show up as part of a package's build diagnostics, for example:

Looking for incorrect headers in 44 dependency files...
	 ./objs/.libs/ftgzip.d uses /usr/local/include/zconf.h
	 ./objs/.libs/ftgzip.d uses /usr/local/include/zlib.h
Please fix build process to get consistent use of fink's headers.
        

And if you are having problems with a build that aren't covered by another FAQ entry, you should also check whether you have libraries in /usr/local/lib or headers in /usr/local/include.

If you do have headers and/or libraries in /usr/local, then rename /usr/local to something else, e.g.:

sudo mv /usr/local /usr/local.moved

do your build, and then you can put /usr/local back:

sudo mv /usr/local.moved /usr/local

Starting with macOS 10.14, it's sometimes not possible to rename /usr/local. If you get an error when renaming /usr/local directly, then rename the subdirectories inside it instead:

        sudo mv /usr/local/include /usr/local/include.moved
        sudo mv /usr/local/lib /usr/local/lib.moved
        

do your build, and then you can put /usr/local/include and /usr/local/lib back:

        sudo mv /usr/local/include.moved /usr/local/include
        sudo mv /usr/local/lib.moved /usr/local/lib
        

A: The output hints at what to do. The message is usually something like:

ld: table of contents for archive: 
/opt/sw/lib/libintl.a is out of date; 
rerun ranlib(1) (can't load from it)

What you need to do is run ranlib (as root) on whatever library is causing the problem. As an example, for the case above, you would run:

sudo ranlib /opt/sw/lib/libintl.a

A: This happens because one of the steps in the build of atlas sends a prompt to the user that Fink Commander doesn't display. You'll have to use fink install atlas instead.

A: Both of these problems are typically due to the absence of essential headers that are provided by the DevSDK package of the Developer Tools. Check whether /Library/Receipts/DevSDK.pkg exists on your system. If not, then run the Dev Tools Installer again, and install the DevSDK package using a Custom Install.

The cannot create executables error can also occur when your Developer Tools version is for an earlier OS version.

A: To get around this, try updating a single package, then try to use "fink update-all" again. If you still get the message, repeat the process.

A: This means that somehow your dpkg database got damaged, usually from a crash or some other unrecoverable error. This most often occurs with a buildlock, e.g:

package `fink-buildlock-foo-1.2.3-4':  missing version

(of course, replace foo-1.2.3-4 with the package name you are seeing).

When this happens, you should edit /opt/sw/var/lib/dpkg/status as a superuser. Then go near the line number which shows up in the error message. You should see a fink-buildlock-foo-1.2.3-4 package whose Status field is marked

install ok installed

Change that to

purge ok not-installed

Under other circumstances, there may be garbage in the file. You can fix this situation by copying the previous version of the database, like so:

sudo cp /opt/sw/var/lib/dpkg/status-old /opt/sw/var/lib/dpkg/status

You may need to re-install the last couple of packages you installed before the problem started occurring.

A: There are several varieties of such errors. If you get the following:

/usr/bin/ld: can't locate file for: -lfreetype

check whether you have an extraneous freetype-config excutable by running

where freetype-config

if you're using tcsh, or

type -a freetype-config

if you're using bash. The Mono Framework has been known to install a /usr/bin/freetype-config that is a symbolic link to a file in that framework.

If your error looks like:

/opt/sw/include/pango-1.0/pango/pangoft2.h:52: 
error: parse error before '*' token 
/opt/sw/include/pango-1.0/pango/pangoft2.h:57:
error: parse error before '*' token
/opt/sw/include/pango-1.0/pango/pangoft2.h:61: 
error: parse error before '*' token 
/opt/sw/include/pango-1.0/pango/pangoft2.h:86: 
error: parse error before "pango_ft2_font_get_face"
/opt/sw/include/pango-1.0/pango/pangoft2.h:86: 
warning: data definition has no type or storage class 
make[2]: *** [rsvg-gz.lo] Error 1
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1 
make: *** [all-recursive-am] Error 2 
### execution of make failed, exit code 2 
Failed: compiling librsvg2-2.4.0-3 failed

or

In file included from vteft2.c:32: 
vteglyph.h:64: error:
parse error before "FT_Library" 
vteglyph.h:64: warning: 
no semicolon at end of struct or union vteft2.c: 
In function `_vte_ft2_get_text_width': 
vteft2.c:236: error: 
dereferencing pointer to incomplete type 
vteft2.c: In function `_vte_ft2_get_text_height':
vteft2.c:244: error: 
dereferencing pointer to incomplete type
vteft2.c: In function `_vte_ft2_get_text_ascent': 
vteft2.c:252: error:
dereferencing pointer to incomplete type 
vteft2.c: In function `_vte_ft2_draw_text': 
vteft2.c:294: error: 
dereferencing pointer to incomplete type 
vteft2.c:295: error: 
dereferencing pointer to incomplete type
make[2]: *** [vteft2.lo] Error 1 
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1 
make: *** [all] Error 2 
### execution of make failed, exit code 2
Failed: compiling vte-0.11.10-3 failed

or

checking for freetype-config.../usr/X11R6/bin/freetype-config 
checking For sufficiently new FreeType (at least 2.0.1)... no 
configure: error: pangoxft 
Pango backend found but did not find freetype libraries 
make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found. Stop. 
### execution of LD_TWOLEVEL_NAMESPACE=1 failed, exit code 2 
Failed: compiling gtk+2-2.2.4-2 failed

the problem is due to confusion between headers from the freetype | freetype-hinting package and the freetype2 headers that are included with X11 | XFree86.

fink remove freetype freetype-hinting

will remove whichever variant you have installed. On the other hand, if your error looks like:

ld: Undefined symbols: _FT_Access_Frame

this is typically due to a residual file from a prior installation of X11. Reinstall the X11 SDK.

A: If you have an error that looks like this

unix_dl.c: In function `rep_open_dl_library':
unix_dl.c:328: warning: assignment discards qualifiers from pointer target type 
unix_dl.c: In function `rep_find_c_symbol': 
unix_dl.c:466: error: `Dl_info' undeclared (first use in this function)
unix_dl.c:466: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once 
unix_dl.c:466: error: for each function it appears in.)
unix_dl.c:466: error: parse error before "info" 
unix_dl.c:467: error: `info' undeclared (first use in this function) 
make[1]: *** [unix_dl.lo] Error 1

then most likely you have a header file, /usr/local/include/dlfcn.h, that is incompatible with Panther. Move it out of the way.

This usually is installed by Open Office, and you should replace this header file, as well as the library /usr/local/lib/libdl.dylib, with symbolic links to Panther's builtin files

sudo ln -s /usr/include/dlfcn.h /usr/local/include/dlfcn.h
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libdl.dylib /usr/local/lib/libdl.dylib

A: This is because gcc2 and gcc3.1 are virtual packages to indicate the presence of gcc-2.95 and gcc-3.1, respectively, on your system. Install the gcc2.95 and/or the gcc3.1 package from the XCode Tools (earlier OS versions have gcc-2.95 and gcc-3.1 as part of their main Developer Tools installation).

Note: Installing gcc2.95 and/or gcc3.1 will not interfere with your gcc3.3 compiler--they can all coexist.

A: If you're using the unstable tree, make sure you have intltool-0.34.1or later installed.

Otherwise, you need to make sure that you have the right variant of the xml-parser-pm package to match the Perl version for your system. For example, if you're on Panther you should have xml-parser-pm581 rather than xml-parser-pm560 (you may also have the xml-parser-pm placeholder), since you have Perl-5.8.1 rather than Perl-5.6.0. If you're on Jaguar, and are using the default system Perl version, you'll have the pm560 variant, and if you've installed Perl 5.8.0 you may have the pm580 variant.

A: What's happened here is that Fink is trying to use one of it's so called Master mirrors. These were set up to makes sure that sources for Fink packages are available even when the upstream site has moved them around. Typically these errors occur when a new upstream version of a package is released, but hasn't made it to the Master mirrors yet.

To remedy this, run fink configure and set the search order to use Master mirrors last.

A: Often, in a complicated build tree, you may find that some of the packages depend on a particular version of a library, and other depend on a different one (e.g. db47 vs. db44). Consequently, Fink may try to switch to whichever one isn't currently installed in order to satisfy the build dependency for the current package that you're trying to update.

Unfortunately, due to limitations in the build-dependency engine, you may wind up with the dreaded

Fink::SysState: Could not resolve inconsistent dependencies

message when trying a sufficiently complicated update-all. This generally gives you a command to try to resolve the issue:

fink scanpackages
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install foo=1.23-4	
      

but this may not work for sufficiently complicated updates. You might need to update packages one-by-one, at least for a while.

A: For errors that look like the following:

running build
running build_ext
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "setup_socket_ssl.py", line 21, in ?
    depends = ['socketmodule.h'] )
  File "/opt/sw/src/root-python24-2.4.1-1/opt/sw/lib/python2.4/distutils/core.py", line 166, in setup
SystemExit: error: $MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET mismatch: now "10.4" but "10.3" during configure
### execution of /opt/sw/bin/python2.4 failed, exit code 1

the problem occurs because the python2* packages write the current MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET to a configuration file when they're built and the python build utilities use this value when compiling modules. This means that if you have, for example, a python24 package on 10.4 that was built on 10.3, either by upgrading 10.3 => 10.4, or via the 10.4-transitional binary distribution, in which python24 wasn't rebuilt, there will be a mismatch between what python thinks MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET should be (10.3) and what it actually is (10.4).

The fix is to rebuild the offending python package, e.g. fink rebuild python24 for the case above.

For runtime errors that give the same type of error message as above, rebuild the module after rebuilding the appropriate python2* package.

A: This error:

 libtool: unrecognized option `-dynamic'

typically means that you've replaced Apple's /usr/bin/libtool with a GNU libtool. Unfortunately, the two libtools do not do the same thing.

The only way to solve this is to get a working Apple libtool from somewhere. It is installed as part of the DeveloperTools.pkg package of the XCode Tools, and you can reinstall that whole package if you first clear out its receipt in /Library/Receipts (drag it to the Trash for OS 10.4 and later, or use sudo rm -rf /Library/Receipts/DeveloperTools.pkg for 10.3).

A: If you see messages on 10.9 or 10.10 like

The directory that should contain system headers does not exist:
  /usr/include

or

cp: /usr/include/lber*.h: No such file or directory

when doing a build, this usually means that you are using a version of the Xcode command-line tools which is for a previous OS X version. Try to get a new version from the App Store, or by running sudo xcode-select -install, or by downloading them from developer.apple.com.

A: The error in question looks like

Unpacking replacement wxmaxima-mac ...
/opt/sw/bin/dpkg: error processing /opt/sw/fink/dists/stable/main/binary-darwin-x86_64/sci/wxmaxima-mac_15.04.0-1_darwin-x86_64.deb (--install):
 unable to make backup link of `./opt/sw/Applications/wxMaxima.app/Contents/PkgInfo' before installing new version: Operation not permitted
/opt/sw/bin/dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (Broken pipe: 13)

The current workaround is to remove the offending package, which removes the PkgInfo file, and then to install the updated version.

A: This can happen if your login script (e.g. ~/.cshrc) does something that writes to the terminal, e.g "echo Hello" or xttitle. To get rid of the problem, the easy solution is to comment out the offending lines.

If you want to keep the echo, then you can do something like the following:

if ( $?prompt) then 
	echo Hello 
endif

A: Typically this involves missing libraries, such as: /usr/X11/lib/libXrandr.2.0.0.dylib or /usr/X11/lib/libXdamage.1.1.0.dylib (or other versions of libraries in /usr/X11/lib/).

The current wisdom on the best fix for such an issue is to install Xcode 3.1.3 or later.

A: If you get an error that looks similar to:

update-perl5123-sax-parsers: adding Perl SAX parser
module info file of XML::SAX::Expat...
dyld: lazy symbol binding failed: Symbol not found:
_Perl_Gthr_key_ptr
  Referenced from: /opt/sw/lib/perl5/5.12.3/darwin-
  thread-multi-2level/auto/XML/Parser/Expat/Expat.bundle
  Expected in: flat namespace
	

this is usually due to a build picking up a different perl5.12 executable than the system's (or perl5.10.0, or perl5.8.8, depending on your OS version).

You can verify this by running:

type -a perl5.12
	

if you're using the bash shell, or

where perl5.12
	

if you're using tcsh (and replace perl5.12 appropriately for your situation).

To work around this issue, temporarily rename the non-system perl5.12 while you are building with Fink.

A: Such errors typically look like:

../../gcc-4.6.3/gcc/fortran/module.c:110:1:
error: conflicting types for 'pointer_t'
/usr/include/mach/vm_types.h:40:26:
note: previous declaration of 'pointer_t' was here
make[3]: *** [fortran/module.o] Error 1
      

This is associated with someone having unnecessarily added a /usr/include/malloc.h->/usr/include/malloc/malloc.h symlink. Get rid of that.

On OS X, #include <stdlib.h> should normally be used in place of #include <malloc.h>.

A: You have used Fink to install a package which is dependent on another package, passwd. passwd installs a number of extra users on your system for security reasons -- on Unix systems, files and processes belong to "owners", which allows system administrators to fine-tune the permissions and security of the system. Programs such as Apache and MySQL need an "owner", and it is insecure to assign these daemons to root (imagine what would happen if Apache were to be compromised and suddenly had write permission to all files on the system). Thus, the passwd package takes the work out of setting up these extra users for Fink packages that require this.

It can be alarming to discover suddenly a number of unexpected users in your "System Preferences: Users" pane (on 10.2.x) or "System Preferences: Accounts" pane (on 10.3.x), but suppress the urge to delete them:

• First of all, you have obviously chosen to install a package which requires their use, so deleting the user doesn't make much sense, does it?
• There are in fact a number of extra users already installed on Mac OS X that you may not have known about: www, daemon, nobody, are just a few of them. The presence of these extra users is a standard Unix convention for running certain services; the passwd package simply adds a couple of extra that Apple did not provide. You can see these Apple-installed users in NetInfo Manager.app, or by running niutil -list . /users
• If you do decide to delete these users, be very careful of how you go about it. Using the "System Preferences: Users" pane (on 10.2.x) or "System Preferences: Accounts" pane (on 10.3.x) will assign all of their files to a random administrator account, and there have been reports of havoc played with the administrator account's permissions. This is a bug with System Preferences, and has been submitted to Apple. A safer way to remove these users from your system is to do so from within NetInfo Manager.app or use the command line tool niutil in Terminal. Read the man page for niutil for more information about NetInfo.

Fink does request permission to install these additional users on your system during the installation of the passwd package, so this should not have come as a surprise.

A: When compiling something yourself outside of Fink, the compiler and linker need to be told where to find the Fink-installed libraries and headers. It is also necessary to tell the compiler to use the appropriate target architecture. For a package that uses standard configure/make process, you need to set some environment variables:

-bash-

export CFLAGS=-I/opt/sw/include 
export LDFLAGS=-L/opt/sw/lib 
export CXXFLAGS=$CFLAGS 
export CPPFLAGS=$CXXFLAGS 
export ACLOCAL_FLAGS="-I /opt/sw/share/aclocal"
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/opt/sw/lib/pkgconfig"
export PATH=/opt/sw/var/lib/fink/path-prefix-clang:$PATH
export MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.9

-tcsh-

setenv CFLAGS -I/opt/sw/include 
setenv LDFLAGS -L/opt/sw/lib 
setenv CXXFLAGS $CFLAGS 
setenv CPPFLAGS $CXXFLAGS 
setenv ACLOCAL_FLAGS "-I /opt/sw/share/aclocal"
setenv PKG_CONFIG_PATH "/opt/sw/lib/pkgconfig"
setenv PATH /opt/sw/var/lib/fink/path-prefix-clang:$PATH
setenv MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET 10.9

(assuming that the build system is running OS 10.9 or later)

It is often easiest just to add these to your startup files (e.g. .cshrc | .profile) so they are set automatically. If a package does not use these variables, you may need to add the "-I/opt/sw/include" (for headers) and "-L/opt/sw/lib" (for libraries) to the compile lines yourself. Some packages may use similar non-standard variables such as EXTRA_CFLAGS or --with-qt-dir= configure options. "./configure --help" will usually give you a list of the extra configure options.

In addition, you may need to install the development headers (e.g. foo-1.0-1-dev) for the library packages that you are using, if they aren't already installed.

A: Apple X11 doesn't keep track of the Fink environment settings, which means that the Applications menu doesn't have the PATH set correctly to find your Fink applications. The solution is to preface the name of a Fink-installed application with

source /opt/sw/bin/init.sh ;

For example, if you want to run a Fink-installed GIMP, then put

source /opt/sw/bin/init.sh ; gimp

in the Command field of your GIMP entry.

You can also edit your .xinitrc file (in your user directory) and add:

source /opt/sw/bin/init.sh

after the first line.

A: This error means that the system isn't connecting with your X display. Make sure you do the following:

1. Start X (Apple's X11, XFree86, ...).

2. Make sure your DISPLAY environment variable is set correctly. If you are using the default setup for X, you can do this with

setenv DISPLAY :0

if you are running tcsh, or

export DISPLAY=:0

if you're running bash.

A: Make sure you have the "eSound Output Plugin" selected in the XMMS preferences. For some strange reason, it selects the disk writer plugin as the default.

If you still get no sound output or XMMS complains that it can't find your sound card try this:

• Make sure you haven't muted sound output in Mac OS X.
• Run esdcat /usr/libexec/config.guess (or any other file of a decent size). If you hear a short noise, eSound works and XMMS should work too if it's configured correctly. If you don't hear anything, esd isn't working for some reason. You can try to start it up manually with esd & and watch the messages.
• If it still doesn't work, check the permissions on /tmp/.esd and /tmp/.esd/socket. Those should have your normal user account as the owner. If they aren't owned by you, kill esd if it's running, remove the directory as root (sudo rm -rf /tmp/.esd), then start esd again (as a normal user, not as root).

Note that esd is designed to be run by a normal user, not by root. It usually communicates via the file system socket /tmp/.esd/socket. You only need the -tcp and -port switches if you want to run esd clients on another machine over the network.

There have also been reports of XMMS crashing or freezing on 10.1. We don't have an analysis or a fix yet.

A: This is a known problem that occurs with recent versions of nedit and lesstif on all platforms. The workaround is to open a new window with File-->New, then open the next file you want to work on.

This is now fixed in nedit-5.3-6, which depends on openmotif3 rather than lesstif.

A: First, make sure you are sourcing init.sh in your X startup ~/.xinitrc.

In Jaguar, sometimes all of the xfree86 packages get built, but only xfree86-base and xfree86-base-shlibs are installed. Check whether you have xfree86-rootless and xfree86-rootless-shlibs installed. If not, then fink install xfree86-rootless should do the trick.

If you do have it installed, then try fink rebuild xfree86-rootless. If that doesn't work, verify that you have /usr/bin/X11R6 in your PATH.

A: Some users have reported that the behavior of the delete key is different between XDarwin and Apple X11. This can be rectified by adding lines to the appropriate X startup files:

.Xmodmap:

keycode 59 = Delete

.Xresources:

xterm*.deleteIsDEL: true 
xterm*.backarrowKey: false
xterm*.ttyModes: erase ^?

.xinitrc

xrdb -load $HOME/.Xresources 
xmodmap $HOME/.Xmodmap

A: This is caused by an apparent bug in Tiger's dynamic linker (current as of 10.4.1), but looks to be fixed in 10.4.3, and Fink has had a workaround in the guise of base-files-1.9.7-1 or later.

If you haven't updated Tiger and/or base-files yet, you can work around this issue by prefixing the name of the software you want to run as follows:

env DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH=: 

E.g., if you want to use gnucash, you'd use

env DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH=: gnucash

This method works for applications that are launched via the Application Menu in Apple's X11 as well as a terminal.

You may find it preferable to set this globally (e.g. in your startup script, and/or in your .xinitrc, which you may need to do to run GNOME). Put

export DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH=:

in your .xinitrc (regardless of your login shell) or your .profile (or other startup script) for bash users and:

setenv DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH :

is the corresponding command to use in e.g. your .cshrc file for tcsh users.

Note: this will automatically be done if you install a recent enough base-files.

A: You need to install the yelp package. This package was not placed within the GNOME bundle because it uses cryptography, and it was decided not to place all of GNOME in the crypto tree just to use the help system.