I received an announcement from the Fink project team that version 0.5.a is now available at the Fink web site. If you haven't heard of Fink, it's an open-source package installation manager for OS X. In other words, it's by far the easiest method of installing a huge number of UNIX applications, including things like XDarwin and the GIMP (a graphics manipulation package). Fink takes care of finding and installing all the dependencies, downloading everything, and compiling the program (or installing a precompiled binary when available). As of now, there are over 1,800 source packages and about 700 precompiled binaries available.
The best news about version 0.5.0a is that it includes full Jaguar support. I've been holding off on re-installing Fink due to some of the issues regarding Jaguar (as much as I like the leading edge, I need to stay on this side of the cliff!). Now that 0.5.0a is available, though, Fink is (as we speak!) being installed on my production machine again. If you're looking for an easy and clean (all software is installed in one parent directory) way to install and test a huge number of UNIX applications, Fink can't be beat...
Thanks to the members of the Fink project team for all their hard work in helping to make a wide range of UNIX software available to all OS X users. I'd have about a 0.01% chance of getting something like the GIMP running on my own; with Fink, a full installation is a matter of a couple of keyboard presses and some time!
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=2002121207491082