Fink on Intel Macs

Summary: It works for me!

The newsflash is discouraging:

A preliminary version of Fink for the Intel architecture is now ready. No binary packages are available, and things are still rough around the edges, but it should be usable if you are patient!

but gives the following instructions:

To install it, you need to install the XCode compiler and SDK packages (at minimum). Then you need to get the file fink-0.24.14.tar.gz from the Sourceforge file release page for Fink, expand the file, and run the command
./bootstrap.sh
At the end of the bootstrap process, run
fink selfupdate
and you'll get the currently available packages.

I tried it and it works! The Intel Mac is fast enough that installing everything from source doesn't take forever.

I then downloaded the 0.5.4 version of the Fink Commander binary from SourceForge - this works.

You can also download the source using CVS:

First login anonymously (this is a single instruction, and should be given on a single line, just copy the whole instruction, and paste into the terminal - when challenged for password, hit return):
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@finkcommander.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/finkcommander login
Then checkout the whole tree (another single instruction - this will create a directory namd FinkCommander):
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@finkcommander.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/finkcommander co -P .
open FinkCommander/FinkCommander.xcodeproj - this should launch XCode.

In the Project menu, Set Active Build Configuration to Deployment; in the Build menu select Build. Wait a short while and voila - your own universal 0.5.4 binary! Find FinkCommander.app and move it into your Applications folder. Make sure you tick use unstable packages under the Fink tab of FinkCommander preferences.

I use Fink primarily to install the latest emacs (emacs21) and L^AT_EX (tetex), but also for other goodies such as unison (which now does doesn't yet build on Intel) and bibtex2html.