On Wed, Feb 01, 2006 at 10:48:26AM -0500, Andy Satori wrote:
I've got a few questions and I hope they don't come across wrong. I
want to clarify something before I begin. Yes, I'm frustrated.
Understandable; software can be frustrating at times.
[...] Applications which use Foundation (AKA GNUstep-Base) exclusively
are portable to nearly any posix compliant OS, as well as Windows
(using Cygwin or MingW). [...]
Ok, so it says GNUstep-base is portable to windows. I'm not sure how
that applies to -gui (which the rest of this email is about).
And yet, here I am after a month of casually futzing around with various
revisions of the Windows installer, and the end results of those
installers and I have exactly one Application from the GnuStep
Applications page built. Of course, it wouldn't run without manually
building a missing dependancy, and then manually starting a program that
apparently all GnuStep GUI applications require before running (gdomap
IIRC).
Cool, you found some bugs? Did you put them on bugs.gnustep.org? As
far as I can tell you did not. Heck, the only other email I ever see
from you is from November complaining about this same thing. Correct me
if I'm wrong...
For the record, that one app is Gorm, which candidly is only of use to
build user interfaces, and is an excellent project. ProjectBuilder,
ProjectCenter, GnuMail, AddressBook all however failed, all for
different reasons.
Gorm is a pretty awesome app :). While -gui works on Windows, any
application which ventures outside of the OpenStep/GNUstep API would
automatically lose any portability unless the developer of said
application took care to keep portability in mind. Once again, I'm not
sure how this is in any way about -gui.
That clarification page goes on to extoll the virtues of camaelon to
change the theme of GnuStep apps. This still doesn't make them feel
like normal Windows applications, WildMenu's would appear to help, but
since I can't get it working either, I suppose it's a moot point.
I think I'm going to refer you to the bottom of the email here.
The advice I've been given in irc and email is to try CVS, so I have,
and things are marginally better, however, I point you to your own
comments again in the Clarifications page:
What? You listen to people on IRC? ;) Just kidding...
"There are tested and released tar/gz packages of all GNUstep source at
ftp://ftp.gnustep.org/pub. It is also important to point out here that
getting source from CVS is not advisable for the average user. Quite
often there are issues with CVS versions of projects (in general, not
just with GNUstep) since they are in development. There might be some
experimental code or some code which might not work at all, again this
is true with all projects, not just GNUstep. In general it is
recommended that end users make use of the packages provided on the ftp
site, which are considered to be official releases. These are generally
better tested and more stable than what might be in CVS at any given
point in time."
Do you really think the official stance could possibly be to use CVS?
In general, it is nearly impossible to suggest CVS as an advisable
option because at any given time the CVS could be horribly broken. If
people on IRC suggested CVS (which I'm sure they did) it was probably
only due to the fact that they were using CVS and could assert that it
was in a buildable/usable condition at that *particular* time.
So which advice should a user or potential user follow? I shall not
point out that Item 7 on that same page then goes on to explain that
older versions from CVS were the issue. When the current "stable"
version don't build, and the CVS tree is the only potentially viable
option, and when those build, but don't actually work, what conclusions
do you really expect?.
bugs.gnustep.org bugs.gnustep.org bugs.gnustep.org? If you had build
problems on the stable release, there would undoubtedly have been
someone that could have helped you.
Now, all of this said, I will grant that things are better, under
Linux. I did get more things built on the Suse 9 box, though, that
was Ok gentlemen, without icons in most applications, and having to
make some other manual modifications to the system to get GnuStep apps
to properly register themselves.
I have used GNUstep on several distros without these problems. But once
again, bugs.gnustep.org, only a quick surf away...
In short, I simply do not see how GnuStep, in it's current state, is
usable for anyone but the most hard core, die hard users.
As pointed out above, GNUstep *is* used in commercial applications
successfully.
Windows users are deemed to be clueless gits that aren't worth the time
nor effort.
Wrong. Here's why open source developers don't support windows: no
open source developers use it. Now, that is a rather broad statement,
but I'm pretty sure that most of the Windows work on GNUstep is done by
people who would otherwise be using a unix-like environment. So until
these supposed "windows developers" start showing up and submitting bugs
and fixing things, things will continue plodding along at there
continuous but somewhat slow pace towards things working.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but right now, I don't feel like I'm wrong, please
sell me on why I should reevaluate my position, and convince my
company that GnuStep isn't a dead end.
Why should *we* convince *your company* that GNUstep isn't a dead end.
Believe it or not, nobody (as far as I know) is making money directly
off of working on GNUstep (some are indirectly, I know). Believe it or
not, people have to put all this code together; it doesn't just pop out
of thin air. We all have jobs, we all have other things to do, we all
have other interests, and while I do not directly contribute to GNUstep
most of the time, I understand all of this. If something is broke,
submit a bug, fix it yourself, or continue waiting for it to be fixed,
but ranting and complaining isn't going to get you anywhere.
I swear, half the world thinks that open source software grows on a tree
somewhere in East Africa.
Just as frustrated,
Andy