Filed under: Software, UNIX / BSD, Developer
Phynchronicity: Fink GUI
Everybody knows that at the heart of OS X lies a powerful UNIX/BSD installation, but actually installing UNIX software can be a bit of pain, requiring command line trickery at least, and sometimes even compiling from the source (and dealing with dependencies, etc.). Fortunately, the Fink package management system goes a long way toward making this easier by packing much of the software in a relatively easy to use format. However, Fink still requires some command line chops, so Phynchronicity takes the Fink idea to the next level. It's an OS X GUI for installing Fink packages that's as simple as navigating through the categories and hitting the install button.Phynchronicity is $20 and a demo is available (Fink must already be installed on your system).
[Via MacNN]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Alec Feld said 11:09AM on 4-14-2007
FinkCommander is free and does the same job.
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Jeby said 11:41AM on 4-14-2007
20$??? For what? FinkCommander is free, is Phynchronicity really better?
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Ondra Soukup said 11:40AM on 4-14-2007
Overpriced crap methinks. I can just type "fink install nessus" and it does the same job.
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Jason said 12:12PM on 4-14-2007
I tried out their MacPorts gui, PortAuthority, a while back and I was fairly unimpressed. It added an unnecessary level of complexity to an otherwise simple command-line utility, I thought. So if this product is anything like it, I'd skip it.
On another note, I'm just surprised anyone still uses fink...the project looked fairly dead to me last time I checked it out, so I switched over to macports because the community seemed more active. Anyone using fink that can verify this?
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Rob said 12:58PM on 4-14-2007
I would also like to know the answer to this question. Which is better fink or MacPorts?
It seems that MacPorts is more up-to-date.
What are the pros and cons of fink vs. MacPorts?
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snarfer said 3:44PM on 4-14-2007
@Jon #4,
Fink is under a lot of development as it is. The core application is not developed extensively, but the packages are maintained fairly well.
I would also like to let all of the FinkCommander people know that I am currently in the process of re-writing FinkCommander (it needs it, trust me) in PyObjC, but I don't expect to have a release anytime soon.
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Ranger Rick said 3:49PM on 4-14-2007
@Rob
Fink is still very active, but I think gets a bad rap because most people's first impressions is with binary package installs which is (admittedly) out of date, and with "stable" which is also very out of date. Fink unstable (which is the equivalent of MacPorts) is pretty actively maintained and up-todate.
We are (slowly) getting the infrastructure set up to do automated bindist builds, which should alleviate some of those first-impression issues. :)
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Takumi Murayama said 1:01AM on 4-15-2007
MacPorts has less packages, too, since it doesn’t like including GPL stuff (or at least I think so; most Fink packages that aren’t on MacPorts are GPL'd).
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