Re: GS on Windows installation report

[Wim Oudshoorn]

Stefan Urbanek <stefan@agentfarms.net> writes:

> Hello,
>
> Here is a short report of gnustep installation attempt on MS
> windows. I was trying to be a bit ignorat while installing it and I
> did not RTFM. I will use 'hints' to denote where I used my knowledge
> for the unobvious things.

Good idea, however I don't know if GNUstep on windows is in a state
to approach so naively.  From your experience it obviously isn't,
but maybe implementation wise it isn't ready either.
Note that I genuinely don't know, maybe after all the installation
troubles it works perfectly, maybe it doesn't.

> Then I returned to the home page and downloaded the GNUstep
> installer .exe file and run it. OK, Accept, OK, OK ...
> Finish. Result was that I have seen nothing, neither icon on the
> desktop (would be nice for new users, even it is annoying for
> experienced users).

Ah, but the installer is not targetted at end users.
Also, because it only contains make + base I can't see
any point in adding a desktop icon.  

> serious, I found it in the Start menu under GNUstep, however the icon
> was some blue M with MSys label, so I was a bit uncertain whether it is
> what i want. I launched it and got a terminal. What to do now? I have
> terminal only - perhaps something went wrong?

This comes back to the same point as above.  Probably it should be made
clearer that the installer is meant for developers who know what they
are doiing.

> What would be the proper installation instructions for GNUstep on
> windows similar to "Visit the www.gnustep.org page and download this or
> that. Run the installation program. Find GNUstep icon in Start and run
> it. You are done and ready to run apps."?

I agree with you here.
Here follow some ideas (just brainstorming)

* We have 3 different usages of gnustep

** End users who will just run applications.  
   They will need:

   + base library
   + gui library
   + back
   + applications

   But not

   - headers 
   - sources
   - msys
   - compiler

** Developers who make GNUstep applications
   They will need
   
   + make
   + base library
   + gui library
   + back
   + headers
   + msys
   + compiler

   But not

   - sources

** Contributers to GNustep 
   They will need

   + all of the above
   + GNUstep sources

What we have now is the "Contributers" part, but only for base.
The reason that gui is not included in the Windows installer is
the simple fact that I haven't had any luck with installing
gui on windows.  Note that I did not try very hard, if
there are no simple instructions which work out of the box
I give up.  
Reasons for this are that:
* I don't use gui
* I don't own a windows machine, so I have to do this at work
  and can't spent a lot of time on this.



So let's say that we want to have the end user installer,
what needs to be done?

* Someone write unambigious instructions on how to compile
  gui and back given that the windows installer has installed
  make and base.
  These instructions should be basically a shell script.

  This allows us to create an installer for developpers
  containg make+base+gui+back

* After that we can create a end-user installer.
  However note that the end-user installer is not very
  usefull if there are no applications.
  So we need at least one application that can be packaged
  on windows.  

  So for the end user the experience is:

  * Run GNUstep-Deployment installer
  * Run Application-Installer

 
* The next step will be to create an "Installer" builder,
  either as part of the "make" package or as a separate program,
  which on windows will output "Application" installers.


All these steps take time.  And I can spare a little time but
not a lot (see above).  So someone has to start, and this
seems the usual problem with GNUstep :-(.

Also, as a final note, the situation on windows isn't too bad.
There is at least a binary installer.  As far as I know 
there isn't one for MacOSX. 

Wim Oudshoorn.