Fink is a package manager for OS X which provides ports of many useful Unix applications.

For more information please have a look at the Fink homepage.

The binary packages of Fink are outdated and especially the gettext package does not contain all needed tools, so it is necessary to install the source version of gettext. To be able to do this XCode needs to be installed.

Xcode is Apple Computer’s integrated development environment for Mac OS X. The full Xcode package is free to ADC members and includes all the tools you need to create, debug, and optimize your own Universal applications, targeting both Intel and PowerPC platforms.

XCode is distributed on the OS X installation disc which comes with every Mac. However it is suggested to install the newest XCode release. This can be downloaded for free directly from the Apple Developer Connection.

Xcode comes in form of an installation package. You don’t need the fullset of stuff included into Xcode. You can customize your installation on the fourth page of the installer. Press the button “Customized Installation”.

For our requirements it is enough to install the bold packages (unselect the strike-through lines):

• Developer Tool Software
• gcc 4.0
• gcc 3.0
• Software Development Kits
  • Mac OS X SDK
  • BSD SDK
  • X11 SDK
  • Quicktime SDK
  • OpenGL SDK
  • Webkit SDK
  • Firewire SDK
  • Bluetooth SDK
  • CoreAudio SDK
• Java 1.4 Developer Tools
  • Java 1.4 Tools
  • Java 1.4 Reference Documentation
• Developer Documentation
• Developer Example Software
• Web Objects
  • WebObjects Development
  • WebObjects Documentation
  • WebObjects Examples
• Cross Development
  • Mac OS X 10.2.8 SDK
  • Mac OS X 10.3.9 SDK
  • Mac OS X 10.4 (Universal) SDK
• Automator Shell Script Actions
• CHUD Tools

This selection should reduce the size of your Xcode installation by 1.7 GB.

The Fink homepage provides a detailed instruction of how to install Fink (http://fink.sourceforge.net/download/index.php). Just fetch the Fink Binary Installer (Intel or PPC) and install the package.

1. Double-click on the Fink disk image to mount it. Afterwards double-click the installer package inside. Follow the instructions on screen.
2. To make Fink available in your system you need to reconfigure the path configuration. Please double-click the pathsetup.app inside the mounted image. This will correct the shell configuration to register Fink inside your operating system.
3. If all went well, you should open a new Terminal.app window and type in which fink. The output should be /sw/bin/fink.

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

username 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.

After Fink is installed, open Terminal.app and execute the following commands:

$ fink scanpackages
$ fink index

The next step is to update your local fink installation with the remote repository. To do this execute:

$ fink selfupdate

Answer the question regarding the SelfUpdateMethod with (1) rsync.

This updates Fink and compiles some updated packages. This may take some time to complete.

You should now update the other packages using:

$ fink update-all

If the commands ends with “Could not resolve inconsistent dependencies” please enter the following:

$ fink scanpackages
$ sudo apt-get update
$ fink install gettext-tools
$ fink update-all

Now gettext can be updated:

$ fink install gettext-tools

If you want to checkout qooxdoo using SVN (to be up-to-date with current development) you can install the command line SVN client, too.

$ fink install svn-client