Building Mapserver manually with Fink

download and extract the mapserver source code (version used was 4.8.4)
install binaries for necessary requirements (there may be more than is listed here; usually shlibs and dev packages)
- freetype2
- gd2
- gdal/ogr
- libiconv
- libtiff
- ming
- proj
- (possibly some posgresql80 stuff, even if you disable it in the configure)

edit Makefile.in as follows:

...
LD=  @CC@           # around line 185
...

(change it to...)
LD=  g++

build with the following:

./configure --mandir=/sw/share/man --with-gd=/sw --with-tiff=/sw --with-pdf=/sw --with-proj=/sw --with-ogr=/sw/bin/gdal-config --with-gdal=/sw/bin/gdal-config --with-ming=/sw --without-geos --with-curl-config=/usr/bin/curl-config --with-wfs --with-wcs --with-wmsclient --with-wfsclient

install by copying the following to your cgi-bin directory for apache:
- mapserv
- scalebar
- shp2img
- shp2mysql.pl (not sure if this is needed)
- shp2pdf
- shptree
- shptreetst (not sure if this is needed)
- shptreevis (not sure if this is needed)
- sortshp
- tile4ms
make sure to change the owner to www:admin for all files copied in the previous step