Re: make sysinstall/Makefile.preamble/GNUSTEP_INSTALLATION_DOMAIN

[Nicola Pero]

> > The ability to delete "Local" without deleting the "core" packages
> > (whatever that may mean to any particular developer) sounds like a
> > reasonable request.  But in my view a -make target like "sysinstall"
> > doesn't seem like the right approach.
>
> I agree.
>
> I think we should go back to my original proposal - that of having a  
> new option to gnustep-make's
> configure.
>
> Something like (we will find a shorter name, obviously)
>
> ./configure --install-core-into-system-by-default

I added such a flag; I thought a long time looking for a very short  
name and finally renamed it to --disable-packages. :-)

The reason is that System is normally reserved for 'packages', ie,  
software that comes with/is managed by
your OS distribution, as in the typical GNU/Linux RPM or DEB package  
setup.  This is why we don't want
to normally write anything into System by default - to avoid  
conflicting with GNUstep packages (as you all
know, we're making an effort to support more and more GNUstep packages  
and people installing
GNUstep core from packages, as opposed to compiling from source.   
These people will have the GNUstep
software from their distribution in System, and will be installing  
stuff they compile themselves into Local).

But if you're building *everything* from scratch, then obviously  
you're not using any packages and your System
domain would normally be completely empty.  Which is fine by the way.   
That's what I am going to do :-)

But I understand many hardcore developers in that case prefer to  
install 'core' software into System.  Which
is what this new option does :-)

So in that case, you can use

 ./configure --disable-packages

when configuring gnustep-make, and gnustep-make will install 'core'  
software into System (a piece of
software is 'core' if it contains the line GNUSTEP_CORE_SOFTWARE = YES  
in all its GNUmakefiles.
This line needs to go before including common.make).

Now what exactly is the list of these 'core' packages ?  For now I have

 core/base
 core/gui
 core/back
 dev-apps/gorm
 dev-apps/projectcenter
 dev-libs/libobjc
 usr-apps/gworkspace

I'm not entirely sure what criteria or logic we are following to  
decide what software goes into System
as opposed to Local in this situation.  It looks like it's going to be  
a completely arbitrary list of
pieces of software.  Presumably, if the logic is that experimental  
software that a developer is playing
with goes into Local (so can easily be removed) and "stable" software  
(which you rarely mess with)
goes into System, then we should only mark as 'core' software software  
that is relatively mature and
doesn't change much and that few people are working on.

Let me know if there is any agreement on other pieces of software to  
include.   Maybe we should
include everything that is in the GNUstep subversion repository ?  I  
was hoping for a smaller
list, but at least that would provide an objective way to decide.

Thanks