ANN: One Step to GNUstep - GNUstep Virtual Machine

[Richard Stonehouse]

                                                     13th January 2014

                       One Step to GNUstep version 0.9.6

   One Step to GNUstep is a ready-to-use software development environment
   for Objective C programmers. It can run on most reasonably powerful,
   modern computers. It is quick and easy to install.

   It provides the language facilities you need for developing in
   Objective C, together with the GNUstep libraries and a collection of
   GNUstep-based applications and development tools.

   Simply import it into a virtualisation system — such as Virtual Box,
   VMware Player or QEMU-KVM — and you're ready to go!

Copyright

   This compilation of programs is copyright © 2014 Richard Stonehouse. It
   comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.

   This is free software and you are welcome to redistribute it under
   certain conditions. For details, please see the page: Licences for
   This Software.

How To Get It

   You will need virtualisation software. This Virtual Machine has been
   tested under current versions (and some older ones) of Virtual Box,
   VMware Player and QEMU-KVM.

   One Step to GNUstep is packaged as a set of three files containing an
   OVF format Virtual Appliance:

       GNUstep-VM.i686-0.9.6.ovf

       GNUstep-VM.i686-0.9.6.mf

       GNUstep-VM.i686-0.9.6-disk1.vmdk — huge file (approx 0.68 GB)

   These files, together with documentation, are at:

       http://www.rstonehouse.co.uk/extras/GNUstep-VM-0.9.6

   It may be useful to check the SHA1 digests of the downloaded .vmdk
   and .ovf files against the correct checksums given in the Manifest
   (.mf) file. This is to guard against the possibility that the files may
   have been corrupted in downloading. It is especially recommended that
   you check the SHA1 checksums if you get an error when importing the
   OVF.

   The method of importing the VM to your system and running it depends
   on the virtualisation software you use.

Features

  Changes from Previous Version

   The main changes from the previous version (0.9) are:
    1. Based on the latest stable GNUstep libraries - gnustep-make 2.6.6,
       -base 1.24.6, -gui and -base 0.24.0
    2. Added GNUstep packages EasyDiff, TalkSoup (and netclasses),
       Thematic and Zipper. Also the Sleek theme.
    3. Built around a more recent (but not the latest) openSUSE,
       version 12.3. The cups-client package is now included.
    4. An explicit and documented mechanism is provided for replacing
       the GCC 4.7/libobjc1 variant of GNUstep built in to the VM by
       either the GCC 4.7/libobjc2 or the clang 3.3/libobjc2 variant.
    5. More up-to-date versions of the guest tools for Virtual Box
       and VMware Player are included. There is now very little reason
       to download and install the official guest tools.
    6. Tested on QEMU-KVM as well as Virtual Box and VMware Player.
       Documentation on running under QEMU-KVM is now included.

  Compatibility

    1. This is a 32-bit Virtual machine, which should run on both
       32-bit and 64-bit processors. (Question - is the 32-bit
       capability still worth keeping?)

  Known Bugs and Limitations

    1. Resizing the virtual screen does not work in this VM under
       Virtual Box.
    2. The 'shift-tab' keyboard combination does not have the effect
       of a 'reverse tab' in YaST2 (ncurses mode) and probably in other
       ncurses applications. It is believed this may be a window manager
       problem.
    3. This release is packaged in the OVF format, rather than the more
       modern and potentially superior OVA format, because the ability
       of virtualisation software to import OVA seems patchy.

Further Information

  Documentation on this Release

       Documentation is included with the release. Start at:
           http://www.rstonehouse.co.uk/extras/GNUstep-VM-0.9.6/index.html
--
    Richard Stonehouse