[KDE/Mac] [Fink-devel] Developing KDE on Mac

[David R. Morrison]

On Aug 18, 2010, at 12:14 PM, Sjors Gielen wrote:
> Op 18 aug 2010, om 17:47 heeft Benjamin Reed het volgende geschreven:
> 
>> I'm obviously a supporter of Fink, being one of the core maintainers
>> and all, but I think trying to package fink with a frontend would be a
>> nightmare.  First, what do you do with people with existing Fink
>> installs?  Upgrade their dependent binaries with new debs,
>> potentially?  Make the KDE packages in somewhere other than /sw?
> 
> These are all just trivial problems. The installer will use the existing Fink installation if it exists. It will use /sw like normal Fink packages. It will use a binary distribution with packages in Fink itself (I don't think 'my' packages will divert from Benjamin's packages, can't think of any patches that wouldn't make sense in Fink itself, or upstream). It will not divert from normal Fink procedures such as the -shlibs packages, so there will be no binary compatibility problems.

What if somebody decides to install Fink after using your installer?  The /sw directory will already be occupied, so it can't be done...  The same would apply to MacPorts if you decided to go that route instead.

I really think you should use a separate install location, such as for example /opt/kde .  Yes, for some users there will be a duplication, but it will only be *one* duplication -- not the entire-kde-infrastructure-in-each-app which you are trying to prevent.  You can have a perfectly normal fink installation in the /opt/kde directory, and create binaries which install things there, no problem.  The only issue (which you are going to have to face in any case) is how users' paths get set so that they find your binaries at the appropriate moment.

 -- Dave