Fink

Note

Fink is in deep maintenance mode: no engine release since 0.45.6 (February 2022), though its package tree still receives occasional commits.

ID

fink

Home page

https://www.finkproject.org

Platforms

🍎 macOS

Operations

installed · search · install · upgrade · upgrade_all · remove · sync · cleanup

purl types

pkg:fink

CLI name

fink

Issues and PRs

📦 manager: dpkg-based

Source

meta_package_manager/managers/fink.toml

Fink 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  • No outdated: the version column’s semantics on “(i)” rows (installed vs latest) is not pinned down by the docs, so no upgradable listing is declared rather than risking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.

What mpm adds to fink

Through mpm, fink gains --exact and --extended search, to narrow to exact names or match descriptions.

Bigger still, mpm reaches across every manager at once: mpm installed and mpm outdated cover fink alongside every other manager you run in one table, mpm upgrade --all updates them together, and mpm sbom exports the whole machine as one bill of materials.

Every mpm command also gains --dry-run and --plan previews, cross-scheme version comparison and purl identifiers. See manager augmentations for how each one is built.

Your fink commands, in mpm

You already know fink: each operation maps one-to-one onto mpm, in an interface shared by every manager.

To…

With fink

With mpm

List what’s installed

fink list --tab --installed

mpm --fink installed

Search for a package

fink list --tab <query>

mpm --fink search <query>

Install a package

fink --yes install <package_id>

mpm install pkg:fink/<package_id>

Upgrade one package

fink --yes update <package_id>

mpm --fink upgrade <package_id>

Upgrade everything

fink --yes update-all

mpm --fink upgrade --all

Remove a package

fink --yes remove <package_id>

mpm remove pkg:fink/<package_id>

Clear caches

fink --yes cleanup

mpm --fink cleanup --cache

Prefix any command above with --dry-run to simulate the underlying manager calls without touching the system: the safe way to watch what mpm would do before trusting it.

Operations

Operation

Supported

Notes

installed

✓

outdated

orphans

search

✓

exact and extended search backfilled by mpm

install

✓

upgrade

✓

upgrade_all

✓

remove

✓

sync

✓

cleanup

✓

doctor

Selecting and configuring fink

Deselect fink for a single run with --no-fink, or persist the choice in your configuration:

[mpm]
fink = false

Keep it enabled but tune how mpm drives it with a per-manager override:

[mpm.managers.fink]
timeout = 900

mpm config-template fink prints every overridable attribute as a ready-to-paste block.

Recipes

A few jobs you would otherwise script around fink, one mpm command each:

  • Snapshot and clone a machine: mpm --fink dump fink.toml, then mpm restore fink.toml on the next one.

  • Export a compliance SBOM: mpm --fink sbom (CycloneDX by default, --spdx for SPDX).

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)

A cooldown only pays off where a compromised release can be withdrawn while the clock runs, and can only be emulated where the registry dates its releases. From the retraction table:

  • Registry: Git-manifest indexes

  • Retraction: Index revert: reverting the manifest, Portfile or derivation commit withdraws the version

  • Publish date: ❌ only the commit date, which is client-set and trivially backdated

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.

Version probe

The version is probed by running:

$ fink --version
Package manager version: 0.45.6

and extracted with:

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

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

Feed any of these through mpm and the raw output becomes one uniform table, the same shape for every manager: filter it, project columns, or export it (mpm --fink installed --output json, or csv, toml, yaml), each package carrying a purl and a version comparable across managers.

Changelog

  • 7.2.0 (2026-07-09)

    • Add Fink package manager with installed, search, install, upgrade, remove, sync and cleanup support on macOS; a bundled configuration-defined manager.