Re: help for packagers (was: Re: FOSDEM Aftermath - the Hotel / Notes from preparing and giving my talk)

[Stefan Bidigaray]

I can say that whenever I was generating the Slackware packages I didn't know the file existed.  Only after hitting my head against a wall for a few hours did I ask a question on the list and was pointed to it.  I generally follow the list and SVN changes but still didn't know about it.  I do believe that having it in the top level of -make should be enough to point most, if not all, packagers in the right direction.

With that in mind, I would like to point out that building GNUstep packages is still a pain.  If I remember correctly, in order to install the core packages into the SYSTEM domain I had to export GNUSTEP_INSTALLATION_DOMAIN.  In my opinion, that is not at all intuitive.  I know why it had to be done this way (Windows) but that still doesn't mean I don't think it's bulky and unintuitive, specially since every other package out for *nix provides only a ./configure, make, make install mechanism.  Don't get me wrong, I hate the "we'll do it this way because that's how it's always been done" argument, but to this one GNUstep added an extra layer with no apparent advantage.

Stefan

On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 7:00 PM, Lars Sonchocky-Helldorf <lars.sonchocky-helldorf@hamburg.de> wrote:

Am 25.02.2009 um 10:14 schrieb Nicola Pero:

my proposal:

- as a first measure we should include a PACKAGERS.readme file into each core package (make, base, gui and back) which:
* contains a pointer to gnustep-packagers@gna.org and discuss-gnustep@gnu.org
* contains a pointer to our bug reporting system (with the hint to report bugs "upstream")
* explains some basic concepts about the respective package
* gives some helpful hints
* what else?

I agree.  In fact in December, I added a README.Packaging to gnustep-make (under Documentation), which should include
a summary of most of the information needed to package GNUstep stuff. :-)

Great! I didn't know that (because I did not look there - but will others look there?)

(feel free to suggest improvements to that file!)

I will read it the next days and post my comments

After your comments, I added to the file a reference to the mailing list.  I don't think it's a good idea to have a separate mailing list
for packagers though, since nobody would be subscribed to it so it's unlikely that help request will get answered.  Is it OK to
tell people to ask for help at help-gnustep@gnu.org ?

Maybe the file should go top-level so it's more prominent ?

I thought about that too, but then again all packages (make, base, gui and back) are released as self contained tar balls here:

http://wwwmain.gnustep.org/resources/downloads.php?site=ftp%3A%2F%2Fftp.gnustep.org%2Fpub%2Fgnustep%2F

and some folks will even package only some of them for their distribution. The readme files should be in there.

Thanks

regards,

       Lars


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