I was talking to drm in #fink earlier, and he said I should email the list with my suggestion for Fink documentation. I end up helping a lot of people install, configure, or use Fink, and in my experience, when things go wrong, it is often related to a $PATH error and .cshrc. People get 'fink: command not found' errors and it's always due to one of two mistakes: (1) They simply didn't follow instructions and add 'source /sw/bin/init.csh' to their ~/.cshrc file; (2) They did, but it's not being read because they have a ~/.tcshrc that's doing other things. The latter actually occurs more frequently than the former.
I wanted to suggest either changing the install instructions to use ~/.tcshrc or to at least make a note there that if you have a ~/.tcshrc file, ~/.cshrc will not be read at all and Fink won't work properly. If you're not familiar with the problem, it's that ~/.cshrc is not read by tcsh when ~/.tcshrc is present. I haven't figured out any reason to use ~/.cshrc over ~/.tcshrc, since no one is really using pure csh on Mac OS X or Darwin, but I think the issue outlined above is a very strong reason to switch to ~/.tcshrc. Over half the problems I help people with are related to this.
You might not think that a lot of people have ~/.tcshrc files to begin with, but a lot do. Sites like Mac OS X Hints will have how-tos in which the author will use .tcshrc simply because that's what they prefer, and if you follow the hint, hey presto! Fink stops working. This can also come up in support given in web forums (e.g. MacNN's Unix forum) or simply suggestions people get from friends (e.g. "Hey, this is a neat feature, put 'set complete=enhance' in your .tcshrc file"). Random other tutorials littered over the internet can use ~/.tcshrc as well.
The instructions I think most people are using are located at <http://fink.sourceforge.net/doc/users-guide/install.php>. One way to fix the problem would simply be to search for .cshrc and replace it with .tcshrc globally. Another way would be to add a disclaimer like the following:
NOTE: If you have a .tcshrc already in your home directory, you should follow the instructions below but add the lines to .tcshrc and not .cshrc. To check if you have a .tcshrc file, run the following > command:I think just telling people to use ~/.tcshrc would be better, but then people who are just using .cshrc would have to be informed of the issue, so maybe it's more practical to just put a note like that in the FAQ. I would be happy to contribute any text you need, if necessary.
% ls -l ~/.tcshrc
If you get output similar to the line below, you have an existing .tcshrc file and should use it for your Fink installation:
-rw-r--r-- 1 neal staff 4333 Jan 13 22:21 /Users/neal/.tcshrc
If you do not get any output, proceed with the instructions below as written.
Anyway, I've written more than enough for now. Thoughts?
- Neal
--
Neal Parikh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Web - http://www.nparikh.org/
"Only do what only you can do." (Edsger W. Dijkstra)
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