Re: GNUSTEP/linux

[Philippe C . D . Robert]

On Wednesday, February 5, 2003, at 11:52  Uhr, Alexey I. Froloff wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 05, 2003 at 11:19:04AM +0100, Philippe C.D. Robert wrote:
> > One way out of this would be to provide a set of src rpms wich
> > are built upon installation via an installation script. But
> > actually, this is not what I'd call user friendly.
> I think best way is to provide GNUstep RPMs for different
> GNU/Linux distributions. And maybe for different versions of
> them... In this way user can download binary RPMs for _his_
> version of _his_ distribution and just say "rpm -U ..." ;-)

OK, here is what I intend to do:

Using RPMs or packages or whatever for the GNUstep core stuff seems to 
be the best way of installing GNUstep itself. This requires some effort 
as many different platforms have to be supported, but it can be done. 
The last real issue is IMHO - as discussed in a separate thread - the 
GNUstep.sh file. This is really a problem as for "users" it is not easy 
or maybe even not possible to modify say /etc/profile, hence we have to 
find a good solution here, the sooner the better!

Now for the GNUstep apps, tools to be installed I will come up with a 
tool which lets you install them via CLI. GUI solutions can be built 
later on, of course, but the CLI is important for bootstrapping the 
desktop (among other reasons). The tool will be a mix between 
Rhapsody's installer.sh and SGI's inst command. It will basically 
install files from a tarred distribution based on a description/spec 
file which allows us to track dependencies and versioning plus it will 
also be possible to create packages supporting multiple architectures.
Later on we might want to use the GNUstep makefiles to create inst 
package descriptions automatically, if this proofs useful.

This concept works pretty well (ie. on Irix) plus it is simple. Of 
course for simple stuff a drag 'n drop tarball solution is and always 
was an option.

Now to install a complete desktop we can provide some simple scripts 
which perform all the required steps so that the user only has to 
execute 1 command.

Another issue will be a xdm replacement or theme for GNUstep, but this 
can be taken care of in a second step, I guess.

How does this sound to you? Feedback/input is welcome...:-)

-Phil
--
Philippe C.D. Robert
http://www.nice.ch/~phip