Fink is a great tool for managing lots of software for Mac OS X. As with any untested software, it can be a bit painful when trying to use things from the unstable repository since the dependencies are not all cleanly worked out yet. I have found a number of tricks to smooth the process.

  • always try to install as much as possible from binary packages first. If you find that fink wants to add more packages when it starts building a package from source, stop that build, and try installing the dependencies from binaries first. To force using binaries, use apt-get, or you can also set fink to try to use binaries from fink configure.
  • sometimes when builds don’t go write, it can leave a lot of packages waiting to be installed. You can see which are in that state by running fink list | grep '^(i)'. Then try installing them one-by-one or in small batches.