So I got bored enough yesterday to install Fink and FinkCommander. These will allow me to install Mono and let me do C# on my TiBook.
From all the reviews/comments about Fink, it sounds as if it will be a no-brainer to install any Unix/Linux apps on OS X. Of course things are never that simple.
The prerequisite for installing Mono are pkgconfig and glib2, which Fink/FinkCommander installed without any problem. So far so good. Then I tried to compile/install Mono and got an error saying it can’t find the glib-2.0.
After trawling the net for information, it turns out that Fink installs software to the /sw directory where most Unix apps expect libraries to be installed somewhere normal, like /usr/ or /usr/local. So I thought, ‘Ok, I can change the prefix for the configure script or put the /sw directory into the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable.’ Tried both of them and neither of them work. By then it was getting late so I gave up for the night.
I guess it is a case of empire building/territory protection. And this is one reason I don’t like Unix/Linux, but love OS X. Give me the power of Unix but none the hard work! Shame no one has submitted a hint to this problem at macosxhints yet!