Fink and Catalina

I recently made the move from Mojave to the most recent iteration of Catalina. Thanks to this list, I was prepared
for many of the resulting changes, such as the move of fink to /opt/sw.

Overall, things have gone well, but there are two problems that I’d like to throw out for comment, and
one tip I want to pass on.

1) Problem: Fink can no longer find binaries.

Regardless of whether I stick to only stable packages or include unstable packages, fink is failing when I 
attempt to self-update with binary packages after doing this in fink configure:
Should Fink try to download pre-compiled packages from the binary distribution
if available? [y/N] y

A typical self update results in the following:

davidaxl@Daves-Mac-Pro ~ % fink selfupdate
/opt/sw/bin/rsync -az -q  rsync://distfiles.master.finkmirrors.net/finkinfo//TIMESTAMP <rsync://distfiles.master.finkmirrors.net/finkinfo//TIMESTAMP> /opt/sw/fink/TIMESTAMP.tmp
I will now run the rsync command to retrieve the latest package descriptions. 
/opt/sw/bin/rsync -rtz --delete-after --delete -q   --include='10.9-libcxx/' --include='10.9-libcxx/stable/' --include='10.9-libcxx/stable/main/' --include='10.9-libcxx/stable/main/finkinfo/' --include='10.9-libcxx/stable/main/finkinfo/*/' --include='10.9-libcxx/stable/main/finkinfo/*' --include='10.9-libcxx/stable/main/finkinfo/**/*' --include='10.9-libcxx/' --include='10.9-libcxx/unstable/' --include='10.9-libcxx/unstable/main/' --include='10.9-libcxx/unstable/main/finkinfo/' --include='10.9-libcxx/unstable/main/finkinfo/*/' --include='10.9-libcxx/unstable/main/finkinfo/*' --include='10.9-libcxx/unstable/main/finkinfo/**/*' --include='VERSION' --include='DISTRIBUTION' --include='README' --exclude='**' 'rsync://distfiles.master.finkmirrors.net/finkinfo' '/opt/sw/fink/ <rsync://distfiles.master.finkmirrors.net/finkinfo'%20'/opt/sw/fink/>'
Downloading the indexes of available packages in the binary distribution.
/opt/sw/bin/apt-get-lockwait -q update
Err file: unstable/main Packages
  File not found
Ign file: unstable/main Release
Err http://bindist.finkmirrors.net <http://bindist.finkmirrors.net/> stable/main Packages
  404 Not Found
Hit http://bindist.finkmirrors.net <http://bindist.finkmirrors.net/> stable/main Release
Failed to fetch file:/opt/sw/fink/dists/unstable/main/binary-darwin-x86_64/Packages  File not found
Failed to fetch http://bindist.finkmirrors.net/10.15/dists/stable/main/binary-darwin-x86_64/Packages <http://bindist.finkmirrors.net/10.15/dists/stable/main/binary-darwin-x86_64/Packages>  404 Not Found
Reading Package Lists...
E: Problem parsing dependency Pre-Depends
E: Error occured while processing fink-package-precedence (NewVersion1)
E: Problem with MergeList /opt/sw/var/lib/apt/lists/_opt_sw_fink_dists_stable_main_binary-darwin-x86%5f64_Packages
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.
### execution of /opt/sw/bin/apt-get-lockwait failed, exit code 100
WARNING: Failure while updating indexes.
Running 'fink scanpackages' may fix indexing problems.
Scanning package description files..........
Information about 14916 packages read in 6 seconds.
No packages to install.

A look at //bindist.finkmirrors.net <http://bindist.finkmirrors.net/> suggests to me that it’s the attempt to find things within a /10.15 subdirectory that is the
cause of the 404 Not Found error. 
Have other users experienced this? Is there a workaround?

2) Perl version issue

The Catalina install resulted in my the replacement of Perl 5.16.2 with Perl 5.18.4 in /usr/bin/perl. 
For many packages, this is not an issue. Most Perl-dependent packages have both a “-pm5162/perl5162” and a “-pm5184/perl5184” option.

However, there is a whole chain of packages that depend on being able to compile texi2html-perl5162, which is
no longer possible. In particular, this eliminates both autoconf and automake, which are themselves used in the build
of many larger packages.

I see no version of texi2html that is compatible with perl 5184. 
Is one on the way, or is there a fix for the problem I can apply locally?

3) Tip: Using FinkCommander

For those who might be interested, there is a fix to this program’s configuration file and preferences that allows it to run properly under Catalina. It was posted a
few months back on the finkcommander-users mailing list over at SourceForge:
1. Right-click on FinkCommander and select Show Package Contents.

2. Navigate to FinkCommander.app/Contents/Resources/fpkg.list.pl <http://fpkg.list.pl/>.

3. Edit the file in a text editor.

4. Find the two lines:

use lib "/sw/lib/perl5";
use lib "/sw/lib/perl5/darwin";

Comment these out by putting a # at the front:

#use lib "/sw/lib/perl5";
#use lib "/sw/lib/perl5/darwin";

5. Find the line "$configpath = "/sw/etc/fink.conf";  ". Comment this out, and insert instead:

#$configpath = "/sw/etc/fink.conf";
$configpath = `which fink`;
chop $configpath;
$configpath =~ s|bin/fink||;
$configpath .= "etc/fink.conf";

(The idea is that it will dynamically find where Fink is installed.)

6. Save the file and launch FinkCommander.

7. Set FinkCommander > Preferences > Paths > Path to fink files to Use this path: /opt/sw.  Leave Path to perl as /usr/bin/perl.

8. In the Environment pane, change or set environment key PERL5LIB to /opt/sw/lib/perl5, and add /opt to the two /sw folders in the PATH. My PATH is now /opt/sw/bin:/opt/sw/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin, yours may be different.
Thanks in advance for your thoughts and assistance.

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