svn on my macbook help

July 19, 2006 10:26 AM

Can you help with installing svn-client-ssl (and fink in general) on my macbook?

I am desperate to get svn-client-ssl installed on my intel macbook. First off, it requires 65 additional packages, which is clearly absurd.

For some packages I get errors for some like this:

dpkg: error processing /sw/fink/dists/stable/main/binary-darwin-i386/base/base-files_1.9.8-1_darwin-i386.deb (--install):
package architecture (darwin-i386) does not match system (darwin-powerpc)

Is there some flag I need? Is this a problem with all macbooks?
Should my configuration be

Distribution: 10.4-transitional
or
Distribution: 10.4/intel
?

Here it seems there is an svn-client-ssl binary, but I can't get fink to find the package.

posted by about_time to computers & internet (7 answers total)

Opps, answered my own question.

http://fink.sourceforge.net/faq/usage-fink.php

Last question on the bottom.
posted by about_time at 10:33 AM on July 19, 2006

You have a PowerPC chip in your Mac. The binary is for Intel (or AMD) 80386 and later chips. Completely different machine instruction sets.

Either get a binaries built for Macs with PowerPCs, or compile from the source.

This is apparently the Fink binary for your machine: http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/fink/Fink-0.8.1-PowerPC-Installer.dmg?download

This page links to a dmg for subversion, if you can't get fink to work: http://metissian.com/projects/macosx/subversion/

In the future, please check your urls -- the one in your post is malformed.
posted by orthogonality at 10:38 AM on July 19, 2006

orthogonality: MacBooks, MacBook Pros, iMacs, Mac minis are all now Intel-based.

about_time: There are also a number of GUI svn clients available. Check out VersionTracker.
posted by lunarboy at 11:23 AM on July 19, 2006

I would say don't bother with fink in general. It's a cool idea, they're good people, whatever, but after two years of having it only mostly work (and lots of compiling time) I eventually removed it completely.

If you want to get that deep into the open source wilds you're better off putting Ubuntu on cheap hardware—their packages always work! For svn and other popular software you can find Mac installers and continue to live a fairly normal Mac-life.
posted by Doctor Barnett at 12:06 PM on July 19, 2006

I use DarwinPorts on my intel macs with no problems, and install SVN that way. I definitely feel the tides moving to DP over Fink.
posted by neustile at 12:36 PM on July 19, 2006

Agreed. Darwinports seems much better maintained than Fink lately. Don't like the "/opt/local" business, but oh well. Fink was great originally but lately it just seems crufty.
posted by todbot at 1:21 PM on July 19, 2006

I don't think it's either/or with DP and Fink, I keep both around in case one works better than the other.

Can't you set the install location to be something other than "/opt/local"?
posted by AmbroseChapel at 6:49 PM on July 19, 2006