Re: ANN: One Step to GNUstep - pre-release version 0.9

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi Richard,

great work! we did it together, but the hard work was and is on your 
side, especially since you already do all the packaging for SuSE already.

What was the reasoning behind this? Many developers want to access 
GNUstep easily to set up a development environment, but apparently for 
some setting up the environment is not successful, maybe because it is 
Windows or Mac.

Today virtualization is widespread and readily available, VirtualBox is 
free and runs on many platforms.

Providing a ready setup is I think the quickest way to start working on 
GNUstep... it is more usable than a LiveCD, the data is persistent and 
can be used in production.

The other advantage is that since the virtual GNUstep is run on a host 
computer, we do not need to provide every imaginable application: it may 
be running alongside Mac, Windows or another Unix already setup with 
email. browser... so the virtual GNUstep is best for testing and developing.


We worked on the project for several months in our spare time: first 
discussing how to ease the access for developers (at first we thought 
about a new LiveCD) and then we did tests about configurations. I wanted 
to ship with Debian or Fedora and did some tests, but eventually 
Richard's SuSE proved to be easier to set up and package as a VM, leaner 
to configure. Also Richard already maintains RPMs, so he only needs to 
complain and collaborate to fix problems directly upstream.
Many small bugs were discovered and fixed in the process, thank you Richard!


We hope this VM setup will help GNUstep's adoption and usage! If it 
proves stable, it may be directly advertised by gnustep.org itself.

Cheers,
   Riccardo




On 06/10/2011 03:08 AM, Richard Stonehouse wrote:
> Acknowledgements
> ****************
>
> Thanks to Riccardo Mottola for the original idea and for much advice
> and encouragement.