At 2007-07-09 23:37:21, Glenn Kerbein wrote:
What do you dislike about FinkCommander, generally speaking? What do
you suggest be done about it, i.e., if the icons are just plain ugly,
where do you suggest that I look for new icons?
What are some features that you feel are missing from FinkCommander
now that you would like to see in the new version? Keep your
responses to a minimum.
Here is a wishlist for FinkCommander which I posted to fink-devel a long time ago:
I would like to see some more of the Fink functionality made available in 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 showpkg') - 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 into you Fink directory (i.e. 'dpkg -S /path/to/some/file') * 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.
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