Re: GNUstep theming (was Re: Objective-C 2.0 and other new features in Leopard)

[Dr Tomaž Slivnik]

> To the end user, a good look is more important than anything.

I agree there are a lot of end users like that - certainly virtually  
all end users whose only contact with computers is to play games on  
their MS Windows machine and play music on their iPod will not see  
anything beyond the appearance.

An investment banker, an engineer, an academic, a businessman,  
however, will never see things this way. They look at things like 1)  
what does this thing do, 2) how productive does it make me, 3) how  
reliable is it, 4) who is behind this, what can I do if they go bust,  
who can I sue if something goes wrong etc. The question of gummy  
never even arises.

GNUstep will never conquer the first kind of market, will not be  
appreciated by it if it does, and moreover, would it want to conquer  
it? Those sorts of customers will be asking for the sorts of changes  
that will make all the rest of us hate the end product. Do you think  
Steve Jobs and Avie Tevanian voluntarily mangled Mac OS X the way  
they have done, or did they do so because of pressure from ignorant  
users and 3rd party developers? I think GNUstep is far better off  
accepting that it will always be a niche environment (which it will  
be whether you, or I, like it or not) and cater well for its niche,  
the second kind of market, which it has a very good chance of  
conquering, or bits of it at least. Well I'll qualify this somewhat -  
perhaps when the younger generation, who are much more tech. savvy  
than our generation is, grow up and run the show, things will change,  
but for the foreseeable future, they will not.

Here's a question for you - if you have the choice between GNUstep  
taking over the world but becoming MS Windows in the process, or,  
staying a nice environment but only being used by a select and  
organically growing core of tech. savvy users who appreciate it,  
which would you rather have?

> First of all, which OS are you talking about? Obviously Mac OS X,  
> but which of it's flavours?

10.5.1 (Intel)

> This is probably the reason why you next to never see 5-way fat  
> executables. There isn't much point in having so many architectures  
> as GNUstep isn't meant to do hours of number crunching.

The advantage is that you can have a single uniform installer that  
everyone can download and install, and moreover - if they want to -  
use in a shared NAS partition accessed by all manner of Apple  
hardware, be it Intel, PowerPC G3/G4/G5, 10.3, 10.4 or 10.5 - all  
executing the same binaries. I think there is value to be had in  
having this - it vastly simplifies system administration. I have this  
sort of setup, I have all manner of Apple machines running off the  
same /Applications/Local partition and I insist that anything  
installed on my setup fits within this framework. This is one of  
several reasons (there are others) I don't like using DarwinPorts -  
it doesn't seem to build such executables by default, although the  
source claims it can be configured to do so.

Once such a package is put together once, scripts can be written  
which build such a .pkg automatically when they need to be updated.  
So most of the work necessary should be upfront and the cost of  
keeping the distribution up to date should not be that much.

> Did you try the apple-apple-apple combo? This should you give you a  
> GNUstep environment with the minimum effort.

No - I thought GnuStep didn't work with Apple runtime?

> No doubt, Mac OS X is moving more and more away from being a Unix.
> BTW., why are you using Mac OS X instead of a much cheaper Linux- 
> based PC?

I moved from a NextStation, to a Dell Inspiron laptop running  
OpenStep, to an iBook in 2001, as the only viable successor to  
NextStep at the time, and on to other Apples from then. GnuStep was  
not viable in those days, although I have always kept an eye on it.  
I've never been happy with Apple and I am growing more and more  
unhappy with it. I would love to have an alternative, and am  
seriously looking at migrating to a Unix variant + GnuStep. I think  
it's very realistic that I do so. If I can do it, if it's viable for  
me to do it, I would love to do it and I will do it.

I believe Apple is doing a very good job of irritating its ex-NeXT  
group of customers and GnuStep has a real opportunity to capture this  
market if it plays its cards right - and now is a very good time to  
do so.

The main apps I can't do without are the development environment,  
TeX, Mathematica, Terminal, OmniGraffle, Mail, Address Book, web  
browser, VOIP, software to run a scanner. I believe GnuStep has a lot  
of these and is a real possibility; I am interested in finding out  
now just how good it has become.

The cost of the hardware is not a big consideration for me - we're  
only talking about a few hundred dollars/pounds/euros per computer.  
Even if you change them every six months, what's that compared to the  
cost of your time, the ability to use the environment productively etc.?

> Looks like seriously messed up dependencies.

Warning: violation by /opt/local/GNUstep
Warning: gnustep-make violates the layout of the ports-filesystems!
Warning: Please fix or indicate this misbehavior (if it is intended),  
it will be an error in future releases!
--->  Installing gnustep-make 2.0.1_0+gnustep_layout

##########################################################
To have a fully working GNUstep make system, please add
'. /opt/local/GNUstep/System/Library/Makefiles/GNUstep.sh'
to your shell login (in ~/.profile)

You may also want to set up your MANPATH :
export MANPATH=$GNUSTEP_LOCAL_ROOT/Library/Documentation/man: 
$GNUSTEP_SYSTEM_ROOT/Library/Documentation/man:/opt/local/share/man:/ 
usr/share/man:/usr/X11R6/man
##########################################################

--->  Activating gnustep-make 2.0.1_0+gnustep_layout
--->  Cleaning gnustep-make
--->  Fetching libxml2
--->  Attempting to fetch libxml2-2.6.30.tar.gz from http:// 
xmlsoft.org/sources/
--->  Verifying checksum(s) for libxml2
--->  Extracting libxml2
--->  Configuring libxml2
--->  Building libxml2 with target all
--->  Staging libxml2 into destroot
--->  Installing libxml2 2.6.30_0
--->  Activating libxml2 2.6.30_0
--->  Cleaning libxml2
--->  Fetching libxslt
--->  Attempting to fetch libxslt-1.1.22.tar.gz from ftp:// 
xmlsoft.org/libxslt/
--->  Verifying checksum(s) for libxslt
--->  Extracting libxslt
--->  Configuring libxslt
--->  Building libxslt with target all
--->  Staging libxslt into destroot
--->  Installing libxslt 1.1.22_0
--->  Activating libxslt 1.1.22_0
--->  Cleaning libxslt
--->  Fetching openssl
--->  Attempting to fetch openssl-0.9.8g.tar.gz from http:// 
www.openssl.org/source/
--->  Verifying checksum(s) for openssl
--->  Extracting openssl
--->  Applying patches to openssl
--->  Configuring openssl
--->  Building openssl with target all
--->  Staging openssl into destroot
--->  Installing openssl 0.9.8g_0
--->  Activating openssl 0.9.8g_0
--->  Cleaning openssl
--->  Fetching gnustep-base
--->  Attempting to fetch gnustep-base-1.14.0.tar.gz from http:// 
ftp.easynet.nl/mirror/GNUstep/pub/gnustep/core
--->  Verifying checksum(s) for gnustep-base
--->  Extracting gnustep-base
--->  Configuring gnustep-base
Error: Target org.macports.configure returned: configure failure:  
shell command " cd "/opt/local/var/macports/build/ 
_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_gnustep 
_gnustep-base/work/gnustep-base-1.14.0" && ./configure --prefix=/opt/ 
local CC=gcc-mp-4.2 GNUSTEP_MAKEFILES=/opt/local/share/GNUstep/ 
Makefiles " returned error 1
Command output: configure: error: cannot find install-sh or  
install.sh in /opt/local/share/GNUstep/Makefiles "."//opt/local/share/ 
GNUstep/Makefiles

Error: The following dependencies failed to build: ArtResources  
gnustep-core gnustep-back gnustep-gui gnustep-base gnutls libgcrypt  
libgpg-error gettext libtasn1 lzo opencdk readline ncurses ncursesw  
libpng libungif tiff jpeg libart_lgpl GMastermind GMines GNUMail  
Etoile SQLClient Performance sqlite3 gawk dbus docbook-xml-4.1.2  
xmlcatmgr xmlto docbook-xml-4.2 docbook-xsl getopt oniguruma5 poppler  
cairo gtk2 atk glib2 pango poppler-data Pantomime PRICE TalkSoup  
netclasses Yap.app ImageMagick bzip2 a2ps psutils gworkspace system- 
preferences PreferencePanes windowmaker
Error: Status 1 encountered during processing.


% . /opt/local/GNUstep/System/Library/Makefiles/GNUstep.sh
% port install gnustep
--->  Configuring gnustep-base
Error: Target org.macports.configure returned: configure failure:  
shell command " cd "/opt/local/var/macports/build/ 
_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_gnustep 
_gnustep-base/work/gnustep-base-1.14.0" && ./configure --prefix=/opt/ 
local CC=gcc-mp-4.2 GNUSTEP_MAKEFILES=/opt/local/GNUstep/System/ 
Library/Makefiles " returned error 1
Command output: checking /proc/1213/cmdline terminated by nul... no
checking for kvm_getenvv in -lkvm... no
checking use of pass-through arguments... no
checking use of fake-main definition... yes
checking ffi.h usability... yes
checking ffi.h presence... yes
checking for ffi.h... yes
checking callback.h usability... yes
checking callback.h presence... yes
checking for callback.h... yes
checking for forwarding callback in runtime... yes
checking FFI library usage... ffcall
checking if ffcall trampolines work... no
none

You have ffcall, but it does not work properly. Most likely because
your're system's security policy is blocking some parts of ffcall
we recommend installing libffi instead.
GNUstep requires ffcall or libffi and proper libobjc hooks to do
invocations and DO.
(This does not apply on apple-apple-apple systems where DO is
not compatible with other GNUstep systems.)

You most likely do not want to build base without DO support. Many
things, including all applications, won't work at all without DO.
If you really want to build -base without DO support, add --disable-do
to the configure arguments.
For more information, read the GNUstep build guide, ffcall section:
http://gnustep.made-it.com/BuildGuide/index.html
configure: error: Incomplete support for ffi functionality.

Error: The following dependencies failed to build: ArtResources  
gnustep-core gnustep-back gnustep-gui gnustep-base gnutls libgcrypt  
libgpg-error gettext libtasn1 lzo opencdk readline ncurses ncursesw  
libpng libungif tiff jpeg libart_lgpl GMastermind GMines GNUMail  
Etoile SQLClient Performance sqlite3 gawk dbus docbook-xml-4.1.2  
xmlcatmgr xmlto docbook-xml-4.2 docbook-xsl getopt oniguruma5 poppler  
cairo gtk2 atk glib2 pango poppler-data Pantomime PRICE TalkSoup  
netclasses Yap.app ImageMagick bzip2 a2ps psutils gworkspace system- 
preferences PreferencePanes windowmaker
Error: Status 1 encountered during processing.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Nope. Just can't get it to install at all - I repeat, I've just tried  
doing everything I can to install GnuStep on a fresh, clean,  
unmodified installation of Leopard, and I can't figure out how to do  
it (other than perhaps to spend the next 3 weeks manually compiling  
GCC and every package needed). I can't figure it out at all!

T