Re: GNUstep-Base and GNUstep-GUI: Frameworks, anyone?

[Nicola Pero]

> Is there any particular reason why GNUstep-Base and GNUstep-GUI aren't 
> built as frameworks?

In the case of gnustep-base, simplicity / portability.  When you port to a
new platform, you have to port libraries first and frameworks later.  So
if gnustep-base is compiled as a library, it always works out of the box
as soon as you have the first step of having libraries / tools (/ bundles)
working.

Also, gnustep-base itself is required to build and load a framework
properly.  Yes, we could add more hacks to break the loop and make that
special case work, but is it worth the additional complication ?

I don't like complications in the building process because when they don't
work on weird configurations (just to name a few, weird windows and apple
builds) someone has to figure out why they don't work. :-)

gnustep-gui might be a better target for frameworkization as some of those
issues are not present.

Btw, I don't think the difference between libraries and frameworks is that
relevant -- it's mostly vapourware in the current implementation (eg, you
can't just take a framework directory and drop it on a directory and hope
to have it working, so frameworks are not really self-contained), the main
difference being that frameworks support somewhat resource versioning, but
frameworks are also lot more difficult to port to different platforms and
have them work there.