Re: Central GNUstep software index?

[Francisco Oltra]

On 20-Apr-08, at 10:41 AM, Markus Hitter wrote:

> Am 20.04.2008 um 06:58 schrieb Francisco Oltra:
> > wouldn't it be great to have the equivalent of the BSD port system  
> > but based on the GNUstep system instead of a specific OS,
>
> Yet another distribution system? An ew distribution system working  
> on at least a dozen different OSs/Linux distributions? What a  
> support nightmare.

Your worst nightmare then. I didn't mean linux only, and i think it'ld  
be shortsighted if you are looking for broader adoption. maybe, that  
is not the case: (you are not looking for broader adoption ).  maybe  
you just want to support ubuntu users and that's just fine.


> Distribution systems are meant to be unified, not diversified. It  
> works pretty well to add a specific server to the user's APT system.  
> Wine and Gerris are examples, users get click-and-install as well as  
> automatic updates.

Thanks to GTK+ Synaptic or some KDE tool, I'm sure. that leaves  
GNUstep out of sight. Those examples you are giving are binary  
distributions,  which isn't really 'deploy anywhere' unless you  
maintain a hell lot of binaries, so that's when 'downstream' comes in  
play, you have to get the software into the distro tree, so it gets  
build for other platforms, that you wouldn't be hosting. How about  
other OSs say solaris, how would you do it then? is there a pkg-get  
blastwave package ? can you unify them too with some sort of metadata?
I agree distribution systems should be meant to be unified,   
especially when comes to solve dependencies and what you have  
installed,  I'm running OS X now with packages from fink, from  
macports, from gentoo-alt, i just got to make sure i load the right  
environment vars for running particular programs, otherwise a mess.

Maybe gnustep-make can be extended for generating package metadata  
that can output spec files, ebuilds, ports, whatever, but that sounds  
like a lot of hassle?
Why not also make it easy for the dev types to access  Frameworks and  
tools...
Again source compatibility is supposed to be one of GNUstep's  
strengths and it would make sense to ease the distribution of source  
over binaries. You can leave the hassle of the binaries to  
"downstream" distro mantainers.


<minirantmode>
I quietly follow this list  from time to time, i know this is a  
sensible matter, i'm sorry i believe that  the marketing appealing  
aspect of software for the techie type doesn't rely in the colors of  
your website, or hip logo, or consecuent slogans "deploy anywhere"  
anyone? Some people might believe GNUstep doesn't need a more modern  
version of Installer that does package tracking over the network, and  
tracks its dependencies, but i think it would make a nice addition and  
facelift on GNUstep image.

</minirantmode>

wow that was wordy, i think I'll duck or disappear and go back to work  
for the week.
keep up the good job.


> Markus
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> Dipl. Ing. Markus Hitter
> http://www.jump-ing.de/