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Fink is not necessarily better
Authored by: tonyarnold on Oct 23, '02 09:26:19PM

err...yes, Fink is a wonderful tool, but /usr/local isn't a "system" directory per-se. It's a defined standard that 3rd-party software is installed in /usr/local, it's just some vendors/developers got the sh*ts with how much other software was getting in the way of their wonderful software.

Some unixen place their 3rd party software in /opt, some in /usr/local, the Fink team decided that /sw was the go for their needs. Was this the right thing? If the apt-get/dpkg tool/packaging system was built into OSX then, no - it wouldn't have been. However, fink uses apt-get/dpkg to great advantage, and doesn't need other packages getting installed into it's directory tree without it's knowledge - /sw is a good idea in this case.

Just don't preclude that if something gets installed in /usr/local that it's a bad thing. On a default install, there shouldn't be anything but a directory structure under /usr/local, so removing everything in /usr/local is not a bad thing on just about any unix system...



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