Wrestling with a Mac Mini

So, I got a Mac Mini for home.  Mostly for hooking up to the TV, watching netflix, looking at family pictures and listening to music.  I thought I'd set it up to build all the software that I've been working with (see post from April 2010).  Here are some notes on what I did...

1) From my first dealings with building OMG software on a MAC (April, 2010), I installed Xcode.  It seems the only way to download this now is to do it through the app store, and they want my credit card information when it's supposed to be a free download.  This made me angry...so, I'm trying out an alternative approach:

https://github.com/kennethreitz/osx-gcc-installer/downloads

I downloaded the following:

GCC-10.7-v2.pkg — GCC Installer for OSX 10.7+, Version 2 (includes X11 headers, bugfixes). 

The lovely .pkg file unpacked into a wizard that promptly installed without issue.

2) Now for fink:  http://www.finkproject.org/download/srcdist.php.

It warns that Xcode is required...let's see about that.  I followed the instructions on the fink install docs page, jumped onto the command line and dove into the unpacked tarball directory.  Typed "./bootstrap" and found that it wanted the Java Runtime Environment installed...somehow the command line install script fired off a software update to do this.  Magic.

Okay, running "./bootstrap" again and it's asking me some questions.  I just went with all the defaults and off it goes, curl'ing away.  It died for want of an Xcode installation.  I am, however, still angry.  Time to dig out the old .dmg from when I installed Xcode on my work laptop almost 2 years ago.  How much could gcc have changed since then???

3) Trying to install Xcode 3.2.1 from a nearly two year old .dmg.  The 'gcc' install said it was okay to install Xcode right on top of it, so I didn't do anything to undo step (1).  Ran off the .dmg and it installed without whining at all.

4) Now for fink, part II.  Back on the console, "./bootstrap" again and I get:

ERROR:  This version of fink needs at least Xcode 4.1 on this OS X version.

5) I am still angry, so I'm willing to try an older version of fink.  Luckily, I kept the tarball for the fink-0.29.10 install I did on my work laptop.  At this point, I just want to see if I can do this without giving the App Store my credit card as a matter of principle...and barf, it's not happy:

Argument "10.7 does not match the expected value of . Please run `..." isn't numeric in exit at /Users/amy/Documents/installs/build/fink-0.29.10/perlmod/Fink/Services.pm line 1381.

6) I'm tired and I give up.  Let's get out the credit card just to let the App Store let me download some free software.  What a bunch of A-holes.

That's about enough for tonight.  I know myself well enough to stop now: I might hurt some files.