Re: Building frameworks on GNUstep Windows

[Andre Levy]

Alex Perez wrote:

> Andreas Höschler wrote:
>
> > Hello all,
> >
> > we have installed GNUstep base on Windows using the the binary 
> > installer (good work) and even managed to build gui. However, we 
> > encounter problems while porting our frameworks to windows. Building 
> > any framework gives us
> >
> > ...
> > SRManager.m: undefined reference to '__objc_class_name_NSString'
> > SRManager.m: undefined reference to '__objc_class_name_NSData'
> > SRManager.m: undefined reference to '__objc_class_name_NSArray'
> > C:\GNUstep\Development\msys\1.0\mingw\bin\dllwrap.exe: no export 
> > definition file provided.
> > Creating one. This might not what you want.
> >
> > Any idea what this means and how this can be fixed?
>
>
> The short answer: This is a limitation/bug of/in GNUstep-make and needs 
> to be fixed. If you explicitly tell the framework to link against 
> GNUstep-base, it will compile, BUT.....the problem is a lot more complex 
> than you may realize..
>
> I recently ran across this myself. Frameworks under Windows are 
> basically completely broken. Frameworks absolutely rely on symbolic 
> links, which in turn relies on a filesystem which supports them (as well 
> as userland tools which support the creation of real symbolic links). 
> Now, NTFS didn't even support symbolic links until Windows XP (version 
> 5.1), and NTFS only had fetal hard-link support in Win2K. Currently, the 
> mingw32 userland tools (and maybe the cygwin ones, but I don't know for 
> sure) don't work the same. Since even with Windows XP, one cannot 
> guarantee that the machine is using NTFS (XP, and possibly 2K, runs fine 
> under FAT32, which has *ZERO* support for symbolic links), mingw32's 'ln 
> -s' actually just performs a copy operation. This is very dirty and 
> wrong, but it's the only safe way of dealing with the problem.

I have tried to use "junction" NTFS's symbolic links. well, the concept 
exists, yes. but since there is no support in the system, one never 
can't tell if a file is real or just a symbolic link. therefore, playing 
with a symbolic link (moving it, deleting it,...) usually leads to a 
disaster.
>  The same makefile
>
> > works great on Linux and Solaris. Has anybody ever managed to build a 
> > framework under GNUstep windows?
>
>
> It works, but as I stated above, you have to have duplicates of all your 
> data, since symbolic links aren't something you can be sure of the 
> existance of under XP or 2K. I've worked up a GNUstep-make patch which 
> makes all frameworks build as libraries under win32. It's not in CVS 
> yet. If you are interested in this patch and in the further makefile 
> magic/changes required to make it work, let me know.

I have tried many times to use the framework stuff in gnustep-make (in 
version 1.3.2, 1.6.0, 1.9.0 then 1.10.0) but I was so lost I resorted to 
build a library then package it as a framework. (of course, I can't use 
features like framework versions but that's ok for the application my 
company works on.)

> I hope you have found this informative, and if you've got any further 
> questions, feel free to fire away...
>
> Cheers,
> Alex Perez


> _______________________________________________
> Discuss-gnustep mailing list
> Discuss-gnustep@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss-gnustep