Personally, my one wish for Fink is better maintenance of FinkCommander. I would like to see some more of the Fink functionality moved into FinkCommander. I know FinkCommander is officially outside the Fink suite, but it shouldn't be. For anyone new to open source on the Mac, having a GUI in which he or she can browse available packages, read detailed info on each package, see what is installed, and manage various Fink tasks is absolutely invaluable. I know many of you are of the opinion that command line should be all you ever need, but for new users, operating fink from the command line is intimidating, imposes a steep learning curve, and masks a lot of great functionality that is in Fink and its tools.
Specifically, I would like to see FinkCommander handle some of these tasks which I typically revert to the command line or manually grepping through the fink tree for: * Viewing dependencies and reverse dependencies of installed packages (i.e. apt-cache info) - this helps answer the questions users have like "why is this package installed when I only ever asked for package xyz to be installed" and "can I remove this asdfg package"? * Cleaning up obsolete sources and debs (used to work but broken with the new fink cleanup syntax) * Sending feedback.. more than just the "success" or "failure" reports, but including (at user's option) key system info (e.g. OS version, platform, environment etc) and build log. * Allowing viewing of other fields in the package .info file (currently shows only DescDetail), such as DescPort, and DescPackaging, which almost always contain key info on what is actually in the package (e.g. what features will be configured and what features will not). * Ability to report which package installed a given file or directory in /sw (or wherever) - one of the dpkg or apt commands, but I can't remember which. * Updated binary of FinkCommander.. I have contacted the maintainters offering to build a binary from the current cvs (which fixes several bugs that are in the 0.5.4 binary release). * Provide a mechanism for installing info and patch files into the local tree, for testing. It would help speed up the package tracker a lot if there was a simple GUI-mediated mechanism for users to download .info and .patch files from the tracker and testing them. In short, it is scandalous that such a key tool in the Fink suite has been neglected. I would venture that 99% of new Fink users depend in some way on FinkCommander, and I think more attention needs to be paid to its upkeep. If the previous authors aren't interested, then they could at least turn over cvs write access to someone who is. Regards, Phil. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Fink-devel mailing list Fink-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fink-devel
