Fink

Fink (https://www.finkproject.org) brings Debian tools (dpkg, apt) to macOS, compiling or installing packages under its own prefix.

Parsing notes, verified against the fink Perl source (Fink/Engine.pm, Fink/CLI.pm, Fink/Config.pm) and its man page:

  • fink list --tab prints one status<TAB>name<TAB>version<TAB>description record per line, no header or footer. The 3-char status is “ i “ (installed, current), “(i)” (installed, newer exists), “i” (newer than fink knows), “ p “ (virtual, empty version) or “ “ (not installed).

  • No outdated: the version column’s semantics on “(i)” rows (installed vs latest) is not pinned down by the docs, so no upgradable listing is declared rather than risking mislabeled versions. upgrade --all works without it.

  • fink self-escalates: root commands re-exec through /usr/bin/sudo (RootMethod defaults to sudo) and no-op when already root. mpm must therefore NOT mark operations sudo itself; unattended runs need a cached or NOPASSWD sudo ticket since fink’s own sudo prompt targets the controlling terminal.

  • The global --yes flag precedes the command word and auto-answers fink’s own prompts.

  • Home page: https://www.finkproject.org

  • Source: meta_package_manager/managers/fink.toml

Platforms

  • 🍎 macOS

Operations

Operation

Supported

Notes

installed

✓

outdated

search

✓

exact and extended search backfilled by mpm

install

✓

upgrade

✓

upgrade_all

✓

remove

✓

sync

✓

cleanup

✓

Ecosystem

  • Accepted purl types: pkg:fink

Usage

$ mpm --fink installed
$ mpm --fink search "query"
$ mpm --fink upgrade --all
$ mpm install pkg:fink/hello
$ mpm --dry-run --fink upgrade --all

Every example above accepts --dry-run, which simulates the underlying manager calls without touching the system: the safe way to watch what mpm would do before trusting it.

Deselect the manager for a single run with --no-fink, disable it from your configuration, or tune its invocation attributes with per-manager overrides.

Command line

  • CLI names, in lookup order: fink

The version is probed by running:

$ fink --version
Package manager version: 0.45.6

and extracted with:

r"Package manager version: (?P<version>\S+)"

Privilege escalation

Fink runs sudo from inside its own commands: mpm never wraps it, keeps an already-warm credential cache alive for those internal escalations, and warns when a mutating call goes silent on a terminal with a cold cache, since a password prompt may be hiding in the stream.

See privilege escalation for the full policy.

Cooldown

State of Fink’s release-age gating, from the cooldown support table:

  • Status: ❌ None (macOS, Debian/dpkg-based)

With --cooldown set, mpm skips this manager’s install and upgrade operations rather than run them unguarded (fail-closed); --allow-unsupported-managers opts back in.

Reference traces

Raw native outputs captured in the bundled definition: the reference mpm’s parsers were written against. If you know Fink well and a transcript below looks wrong, or a newer release changed its output format, report it.

$ fink list --tab --installed
 i 	figlet	2.2.5-1	Prints text as ASCII art
(i)	nano	6.2-1	Small editor
   	lynx	2.9.0-1	Text browser is not installed