FINK.CONF(5) BSD File Formats Manual FINK.CONF(5)NAMEfink.conf — configuration file for fink(8)SYNOPSIS
/sw/etc/fink.conf
DESCRIPTION
When fink(8) is initially installed it prompts you for the answers to
some questions to set up your configuration file, such as which mirrors
you want to use for downloading files and how to acquire super-user
rights. You can re-run this process by calling the fink configure com‐
mand. In order to set some options, you may need to edit your fink.conf
by hand. In general, these options are meant for advanced users only.
Your fink.conf consists of multiple lines, in the format
OptionName: Value
Options are one per line, and the option name is separated from its value
by a : and a single space. The contents of value depends on the option,
but it is normally either a boolean ("True" or "False"), a string, or a
list of strings delimited by a space. For example:
BooleanOption: True
StringOption: Something
ListOption: Option1 Option2 Option3
REQUIRED SETTINGS
Some of the settings in fink.conf are mandatory. Without them fink cannot
function properly. The following settings belong to this category.
Basepath: path
Tells fink where it was installed. You should not change this value
after installation, it will confuse fink.
OPTIONAL USER SETTINGS
There are various optional settings which users can customize to change
the behaviour of fink.
RootMethod: su or sudo or none
For some operations, fink needs super user rights. Recognized val‐
ues are sudo or su. You can also set this to none, in which case
you must run fink as root yourself. The default value is sudo and
in most cases it should not be changed.
Trees: list of trees
Available trees are:
local/main - any local packages you want to install
local/bootstrap - packages used in the installation of fink
stable/main - stable packages from fink
unstable/main - unstable packages from fink
You may also add your own trees in the /sw/fink/dists directory for
your own purposes, but this is not necessary in most circumstances.
The default trees are "local/main local/bootstrap stable/main".
This list should be kept in sync with /sw/etc/apt/sources.list.
The order of trees is meaningful, as packages from later trees may
override packages from earlier ones.
Distribution: 10.6, 10.7, 10.8, or 10.9.
fink needs to know which version of Mac OS X you are running. Mac
OS X versions up to 10.5 are no longer supported by this version of
fink. This field is set by running the /sw/lib/fink/postinstall.pl
script. You should not need to alter this value manually.
FetchAltDir: path
Usually fink will store the sources it fetches in /sw/src. Using
this option, you can specify an (absolute) alternate directory in
which fink should look for downloaded source code. For example:
FetchAltDir: /usr/src
Verbose: a number from 0 to 3
This option sets how much information fink tells you about what it
is doing. The values are:
0 - Quiet (don't show download stats)
1 - Low (don't show tarballs being expanded)
2 - Medium (show almost everything)
3 - High (show everything)
The default value is 1.
SkipPrompts: a comma-delimited list
This option instructs fink to refrain from asking for input when
the user does not want to be prompted. Each prompt belongs to a
category. If a prompt's category is in the SkipPrompts list then
the default option will be chosen within a very short period of
time.
Currently, the following categories of prompts exist:
fetch - Downloads and mirrors
virtualdep - Choosing between alternative packages
By default, no prompts are skipped.
OldIndexes: ignore, update or warn
When installing packages, fink will check if your package index is
over 2 weeks old. If it is, you can have fink automatically warn
you, or even download updates for you. The default value is
"warn".
NoAutoIndex: boolean
fink caches its package descripition files to save it having to
read and parse them all every time it runs. fink checks whether or
not the package index needs to be updated unless this option is set
to "True". It defaults to "False" and it is not recommended that
you change it. If you do, you may need to manually run the fink
index command to update the index.
SelfUpdateNoCVS: boolean
The command fink selfupdate upgrades the fink package manager to
the latest release. This option makes sure that the Concurrent
Version System (CVS) is not used to achieve this when set to True.
It is set automatically by the fink selfupdate-cvs command, so you
should not need to change it manually.
Buildpath: path
fink needs to create several temporary directories for each package
it compiles from source. They are placed in /sw/src/fink.build by
default. If you want them to be somewhere else, specify the (abso‐
lute) path here. See the descriptions of the KeepRootDir and
KeepBuildDir fields later in this document for more information
about these temporary directories.
It is recommended that the Buildpath end with .noindex or .build.
Otherwise, Spotlight will attempt to index the temporary files in
the Buildpath, slowing down builds.
Bzip2Path: the path to your bzip2 (or compatible) binary
The Bzip2Path option lets you override the default path for the
bzip2 command-line tool. This allows you to specify an alternate
location to your bzip2 executable, pass optional command-line
options, or use a drop-in replacement like pbzip2 for decompressing
.bz2 archives.
MaxBuildJobs: positive integer
This option specifies how many concurrent build jobs should be
spawned when building a package that has parallel build jobs
enabled. Building in parallel speeds up the build process on multi-
CPU or multi-core systems. Technically speaking, fink uses the
value of this option in MAKEFLAGS=-j. Running fink configure will
tell you how many active CPUs/cores are available on your system.
AutoUid: boolean
This option specifies whether fink should dynamically allocate the
UID and GID of its unprivileged fink-bld user if that user is
absent.
FinkBldUid: positive integer
This item specifies the current UID for the fink-bld user. The new
setting will take effect when you run a fink operation that can
build a package, such as selfupdate, build, rebuild, or install.
AutoUidMin: positive integer
Minimum value for the pool of values from which fink will attempt
to find an unused UID or GID automatically if AutoUid: true is set.
AutoUidMax: positive integer
Maximum value for the pool of values from from which fink will
attempt to find an unused UID or GID automatically if AutoUid: true
is set.
DOWNLOAD SETTINGS
There are various settings which influence the way fink downloads package
data.
ProxyPassiveFTP: boolean
This option makes fink use "passive" mode for FTP downloads. Some
FTP server or network configurations require this option to be set
to True. It is recommended that you leave this option on at all
times since active FTP is deprecated.
ProxyFTP: url
If you use a FTP proxy then you should enter its address here, for
example:
ProxyFTP: ftp://yourhost.com:2121/
Leave if blank if you do not use a FTP proxy.
ProxyHTTP: url
If you use a HTTP proxy then you should enter its address here, for
example:
ProxyHTTP: http://yourhost.com:3128/
Leave if blank if you do not use a HTTP proxy.
DownloadMethod: wget or curl or axel or axelautomirror or aria2
fink can use four different applications to download files from the
Internet - wget, curl, axel, or aria2. The value axelautomirror
uses an experimental mode of the axel(1) application which tries to
determine the closest server that has a certain file. The use of
axelautomirror is not recommended at this time. The default value
is curl. The application you chose as DownloadMethod MUST be
installed!
SelfUpdateMethod: point, rsync or cvs
fink(8) can use some different methods to update the package info
files. rsync is the recommended setting, it uses rsync(1) to down‐
load only modified files in the trees that you have enabled. Note
that if you have changed or added to files in the stable or unsta‐
ble trees, using rsync will delete them. Make a backup first. cvs
will download using anonymous or :ext: cvs(1) access from the Fink
repository. This has the disadvantage that cvs can not switch mir‐
rors, if the server is unavailable you will not be able to update.
point will download only the latest released version of the pack‐
ages. It is not recommended as your packages may be quite out of
date.
SelfUpdateTrees: space separated list of trees
By default, the selfupdate methods will update only the current
distribution's tree. This option overrides the list of distribu‐
tion versions that will be updated during a selfupdate.
Please note that you will need a recent "cvs" binary installed if
you wish to include directories that do not have CVS/ directories
in their entire path (e.g., dists/local/main or similar).
UseBinaryDist: boolean
Causes fink to try to download pre-compiled binary packages from
the binary distribution if available and if deb is not already on
the system. Passing fink the -b flag has the same effect, but only
operates on that single fink invocation. Passing fink the
--no-use-binary-dist flag overrides this, and compiles from source
for that single fink invocation.
Note that this mode instructs fink to download the version it wants
if that version is available for download; it does not cause fink
to choose a version based on its binary availability.
MIRROR SETTINGS
Getting software from the Internet can be a tedious thing and often down‐
loads are not as fast as we would like them to be. Mirror servers host
copies of files available on other servers, but may have a faster connec‐
tion to the Internet or be geographically closer to you, thus enabling
you to download files faster. They also help reduce load on busy primary
servers, for example ftp.gnu.org, and they provide an alternative should
one server not be reachable.
In order for fink to pick the best mirror for you, you must tell it which
continent and which country you reside in. If downloads from one server
fail, it will prompt you if you want to retry from the same mirror, a
different mirror in the same country or continent, or a different mirror
anywhere in the world.
fink.conf holds settings about which mirrors you would like to use.
MirrorContinent: three letter code
You should change this value using the fink configure command. The
three letter code is one found in /sw/lib/fink/mirror/_keys. For
example, if you live in europe:
MirrorContinent: eur
MirrorCountry: six letter code
You should change this value using the fink configure command. The
three letter code is one found in /sw/lib/fink/mirror/_keys. For
example, if you live in Austria:
MirrorCountry: eur-AT
MirrorOrder: MasterFirst or MasterLast or MasterNever or ClosestFirst
fink supports 'Master' mirrors, which are mirrored repositories of
the source tarballs for all Fink packages. The advantage of using
the Master mirror set is that the source download URLs will never
break. Users can choose to use these mirrors which are maintained
by the Fink team, or to use only the original source URLs and
external mirror sites such as the gnome, KDE, and debian mirror
sites. Additionally users can choose to combine the two sets,
which are then searched in proximity order, as documented above.
When using the MasterFirst or MasterLast options, the user can
'skip ahead' to the Master (or non Master) set if a download fails.
The options are:
MasterFirst - Search Master source mirrors first.
MasterLast - Search Master source mirrors last.
MasterNever - Never use Master source mirrors.
ClosestFirst - Search closest source mirrors first (combine
all mirrors into one set).
Mirror-rsync:
When doing 'selfupdate' with the SelfupdateMethod set to rsync,
this is the rsync url to sync from. This should be an anonymous
rsync url, pointing to a directory which contains all the Fink dis‐
tributions and trees.
DEVELOPER SETTINGS
Some options in fink.conf are only useful to developers. We do not recom‐
mend that conventional Fink users modify them. The following options fall
into this category.
KeepRootDir: boolean
Causes fink not to delete the temporary installation directory
root-[name]-[version]-[revision] in the Buildpath after building a
package. Defaults to false. Be careful, this option can fill your
hard-disk quickly! Passing fink the -K flag has the same effect,
but only operates on that single fink invocation.
KeepBuildDir: boolean
Causes fink not to delete the package compile directory
[name]-[version]-[revision] in the Buildpath after building a pack‐
age. Defaults to false. Be careful, this option can fill your
hard-disk quickly! Passing fink the -k flag has the same effect,
but only operates on that single fink invocation.
ADVANCED SETTINGS
There are some other options which may be useful, but require some knowl‐
edge to get right.
MatchPackageRegEx: regex
Causes fink not to ask which package to install if one (and only
one) of the choices matches the perl Regular Expression given here.
Example:
MatchPackageRegEx: (.*-ssl$|^xfree86$|^xfree86-shlibs$)
will match packages ending in '-ssl', and will match 'xfree86' and
'xfree86-shlibs' exactly.
CCacheDir: path
If the Fink package ccache-default is installed, the cache files it
makes while building Fink packages will be placed here. Defaults to
/sw/var/ccache. If set to none, fink will not set the CCACHE_DIR
environment variable and ccache will use $HOME/.ccache, potentially
putting root-owned files into your home directory.
NotifyPlugin: plugin
Specify a space-separated list of notification plugins, to tell you
when packages have been installed/uninstalled. Defaults to Growl
(requires Mac::Growl to operate). The available plugins are listed
in the output of "fink plugins".
See the wiki at https://github.com/fink/fink/wiki/Notification-plugins
for more information.
AutoScanpackages: boolean
When fink builds new packages, apt-get(8) does not yet know about
them. Historically, the command fink scanpackages had to be run
for apt-get to notice the new packages, but now this happens auto‐
matically. If this option is present and false, then fink
scanpackages will no longer be run automatically after packages are
built.
ScanRestrictivePackages: boolean
When scanning the packages for apt-get(8), fink normally scans all
packages in the current trees. However, if the resuting apt reposi‐
tory will be made publically available, the administrator may be
legally obligated not to include packages with Restrictive or
Commercial licenses. If this option is present and false, then fink
will omit those packages when scanning.
AUTHOR
This manpage is maintained by the Fink Core Group <fink-
core@lists.sourceforge.net>.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
fink is developed and maintained by The Fink Project (http://www.finkpro‐
ject.org).
SEE ALSOapt-get(8), fink(8)
June 5, 2024