Hi Bruce, Fink is a very nice package when it is working. Unfortunately, it is not always working. Fink was broken for a significant portion of time during the 10.2 to 10.3 OS upgrade. Could have been 10.1 to 10.2, lost in the fog of time. Anyway, forcing non-command line savvy mac users to synchronize fink, fortran compilers, perl versions, especially as another OS upgrade cycle is likely approaching seems problematic to me. It's also so unmac-like to force users to compile from scratch.
I would STRONGLY encourage the mac crowd here on the list to consider the approach that Matt suggests. It does mean that Mac users would have to get Fink up and running on their computers (and get G77, etc working), and that would certainly increase the height of the potential barrier for the not-so-computer-savvy Mac user.
That just seems like the best way to go. But what do I know about the Macintosh world -- I'm just a numbskull linux user. ;-)
Well, nobody's perfect ;-) Jeff