FinkCommander News

Version 0.5.5 of FinkCommander has been released. This version is now a fully universal binary that should run on Mac OS 10.4, 10.5, and 10.6. Note that users on 10.6 must set FinkCommander's Perl path to /usr/bin/perl5.8.9 in the Preferences window. For details, please see the Version History at:

http://finkcommander.sourceforge.net/history/

If you have an earlier version of FinkCommander installed, you will need to move it to the trash before installing this version.... read more

I have decided, along with a friend, to rewrite FinkCommander and give it a well-deserved update. It appears that the lead developers are no longer working on it, and have allowed me to take over the project.
I have a subversion (I hate CVS, especially Sourceforge's CVS) on my own server. I will also be having blog updates at http://www.blog.caffeinatedmacs.com/

FinkCommander 0.5.4 has been released a while ago. While primarily a bug-fix release it also has a couple of new features. German users should note that 0.5.4 crashes on start-up but this has already been fixed in the CVS version. Upcoming releases will try to capture as much as possible of all (new) fink features, squash a couple of bugs and improve on the help files.

FinkCommander is a graphical user interface for the Fink software packaging system for Mac OS X. It provides an intuitive front-end to the Fink command-line tools for downloading and installing Unix software. Version 0.5.3 of FinkCommander has been released. This version is a bug-fix release, which fixes the bug added in 0.5.2 where all packages showed as stable.

http://finkcommander.sourceforge.net/history/... read more

Version 0.5.2 of FinkCommander has been released. This version adds rsync support and some other small tweaks. For details, please see the Version History at:

http://finkcommander.sourceforge.net/history/

If you have an earlier version of FinkCommander installed, you will need to move it to the trash before installing this version.

FinkCommander is a graphical user interface for the Fink software packaging system for Mac OS X. It provides an intuitive front-end to the Fink command-line tools for downloading and installing Unix software.

Version 0.5.1 of FinkCommander has been released. This version is primarily a bug-fix release. For details, please see the Version History at:

http:finkcommander.sourceforge.net/history/

If you have an earlier version of FinkCommander installed, you will need to move it to the trash before installing this version.

FinkCommander is a graphical user interface for the Fink software packaging system for Mac OS X. It provides an intuitive front-end to the Fink command-line tools for downloading and installing Unix software.

Version 0.5.0 of FinkCommander has been released. It has a number of significant new features, including a package browser, which provides a Finder-like interface for viewing the files intalled on your system by a particular Fink package.

FinkCommander is a graphical user interface for the Fink software packaging system for Mac OS X. It provides an intuitive front-end to the Fink command-line tools for downloading and installing Unix software.... read more

Version 0.4.3 of FinkCommander has been released. It includes changes to the command for submitting feedback to Fink package maintainers and fixes a number of bugs.

If you have version 0.4.2 installed, you will need to move it to the trash before installing this version.

FinkCommander is a graphical user interface for the Fink software packaging system for Mac OS X. It provides an intuitive front-end to the Fink command-line tools for downloading and installing Unix software.

Version 0.4.2 of FinkCommander has been released. It includes the option to run commands in Terminal as well as other enhancements.

The package installer has also been eliminated. FinkCommander will make the necessary changes to its file permissions the first time you run a command.

FinkCommander is a graphical user interface for the Fink software packaging system for Mac OS X. It provides an intuitive front-end to the Fink command-line tools for downloading and installing Unix software.

There is a typo in the instructions for changing the permissions of the Launcher tool (items 2 and 3) in the README file included in the FinkCommander 0.4.1 disk images and source files. The directory name "Resource" in the path to Launcher should be "Resources." The online version at

http://finkcommander.sourceforge.net/pages/README.html

has been corrected.

This is primarily a bug-fix release addressing two problems reported by a number of users for 0.4.0:
(1) collapse of the output view when the interaction dialog appeared and (2) application crashes on invocation of the Package Inspector or Email Maintainer command.

This release also allows the user to adjust or eliminate the timeout for FinkCommander's authorization by making changes to the /private/etc/authorization file. Instructions are included in the latest README.

The version of FinkCommander now in cvs fixes two bugs:
1. application crash on invocation of the Package Inspector or the Email Maintainer command;
2. disappearance of output view when the input sheet dialog appears.
I would like to issue an official release tomorrow and would appreciate it users who have experienced these problems tested the cvs version and reported back to me on the results.

Thanks to Dave Love, Version 0.4.0 uses Apple's Security Framework to authorize FinkCommands. It also includes an improved table with more specific information on installed and available package versions and several other enhancements.

Thanks to code supplied by fellow Cocoa developer Dave Love, the version of FinkCommander now in cvs uses the Security Framework rather than sudo to authorize fink and apt-get commands. Instead of the old password sheet, FC will now display the standard authorization dialog before a command is executed.

To accomplish this, FC uses an auxilliary tool that is setuid root to run the commands. Although Launcher is a separate target, it should automatically be built as needed when you build FinkCommander.... read more

It is no longer necessary to trash your preferences if you move from the release version to the cvs version. The current cvs code will automatically remove those preference items that cause a conflict and leave the remaining preferences in place.

Ich versuche gerade eine deutsche Lokalisation fr FinkCommander zu machen. Leider ist es 23 Jahre seitdem ich ein Student in Berlin gewesen bin. Also ist mein Deutsch nicht so gut wie es einmal war, und ich habe sowieso die deutsche Computersprache nie gelernt. (Damals gab es fast keine PCs.)

Ich wre sehr dankbar wenn jemand die deutsche Version von FinkCommander berprfen wurde. Das knnen Sie von cvs (http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=48896) erreichen. Sie knnen das Computerprogramm selbst oder das "Source" in German.lproj berprfen. Wenn Sie Fehler finden (und das werden Sie doch), knnen Sie mich entweder Notizen order verbesserte Source senden.

The current cvs version includes extensive changes (improvements, I hope) to the information presented in the table. Since these changes will probably clash with the contents of your current preferences file, you should trash it: ~/Library/Preferences/com.sburrious.finkcommander.plist.

I'll obviously add an automatic fix for the official release of this version.

Version 0.3.3a has been released to fix 2 bugs:

* Failure to display the Package Inspector on pre-release versions of Jaguar.
* Code changes that broke the "always choose default response to prompts" option.

It turns out FinkCommander is still not fully functional on Jaguar. The Package Inspector will not open, apparently due to yet another string encoding problem. I have a patch from Ben Hines that appears to fix the problem and plan to issue a bug fix before Jaguar's official release on 8/24. I will also post a notice here when the changes are available in cvs.

Version 0.3.3 includes a new Environment tab in preferences, an option (under the new Display tab) to limit the scrollback buffer and, thanks to Martin Costabel, more accurate information on the packages available in binary form. FinkCommander should be ready for the release of Jaguar on 8/24.

Thanks to the assistance of Dave Vasilevsky, Brian Lenihan and above all Justin Hallett the problem with running FinkCommander on pre-release versions of Jaguar has been fixed.

If you have Jaguar, the version of FinkCommander currently in cvs should be fully functional. A new release incorporating these fixes will be out within the next week.

I have had two reports from users with pre-release versions of OS X v. 10.2 that FinkCommander v. 0.3.2 no longer works on their systems. With the cooperation of one of these users, who has been testing cvs versions, I am attempting to fix this, but it's difficult to debug a problem you can't reproduce.

I have received a report that some feedback emails sent via FinkCommander are going to outdated email addresses. If you're having trouble installing a package, please be sure to run selfupdate-cvs before sending the package maintainer feedback. In addition to insuring that your feedback reaches the current package maintainer, doing this may well fix the problem.

Version 0.3.2 includes a new view menu that allows the user to choose which columns to display in the table, improved methods of communicating feedback to package maintainers and other enhancements.

You may have noticed that there is a "cleanup" command under the Source->Utilities menu. If you've tried it, you have probably found that it didn't do anything. This is because the cleanup command is currently only available through the cvs version of the package manager.

Unlike the packages themselves, the package manager is not updated through the selfupdate-cvs command. To get it, you would need to follow the instructions under "Updating the Package Manager" at http://fink.sourceforge.net/doc/cvsaccess/index.php. I don't recommend this for everyone, since the cvs version of the package manager truly is experimental.... read more