Re: building a self-contained deployable gnustep [cont]

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 16 Oct 2011, at 23:48, Julian Mayer wrote:

>> i guess thats just what i will do. i'll come back either with a set of 
>> working steps, or with problem reports ;->
> 
> ok, problem reports ;-)
> 
> what i did:
> • setup a clean ubuntu 10.4 vmware image and install gnustep trunk 
> (--with-config-file=./GNUstep.conf)
> • build and run hello world gnustep app to verify gnustep is working (well, i 
> don't get fonts if the x11 backend is used even with freetype, art works fine)
> • move the gnustep installation out-of-place
> • add the gnustep "System", "Local" folders as well as all the .so libraries 
> and the GNUstep.conf (full of paths starting with './') to my hello world app 
> folder
> 
> 
> now i can't get the hello world app to run again. i am properly setting the 
> LD_LIBRARY_PATH and
> • trying to start the app directly ./HelloWorld makes it stuck, probably 
> because GNUstep.sh hasn't been sourced
> • trying to source the GNUstep.sh (directly or indirectly through openapp) 
> within the hello world app bundle fails because the file references the old 
> global installation path instead of the relative pathes ... isn't it picking 
> up my user .GNUstep.conf or what?

Ot the 13th I wrote:
> 
> The GNUstep.sh script will do that for you as long as you have the 
> GNUSTEP_CONFIG_FILE environment variable set to point to your GNUstep.conf 
> (if you don't define the environment variable, GNUstep.sh will look for 
> GNUsterp.conf in the default location).

It sounds like you forgot to set the GNUSTEP_CONFIG_FILE environment variable.

However, all you should really need to launch an app is to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH 
... since the rest of the variables set up by GNUstep.sh are only used when 
*building* apps.

> should i just forget about sourcing GNUstep.sh and try to set environment 
> variables like GNUSTEP_LOCAL_ROOT myself from my launcher script?

You don't need to set them at all ...unless you need your app to use 
gnustep-make to build other code (something I've occasionally done, but I know 
is extremely rare).

I don't know if you read the documentation about making relocatable packages, 
or just if it was too unclear and/or depends too much on familiarity with other 
parts of the documentation.
It seems clear to me (and I know at least one person has used it to do 
relocatable packages on mswindows without raising major issues)... but then, I 
wrote a big chunk of the code and the documentation 9and the people using it 
may have had big problems why simply didn't tell me about), so it's impossible 
for me to judge.

Anyway, I've just spent some time trying to make things simpler by providing 
templates for standalone deployment (will probably need further tweaking, and I 
haven't documented it yet though) ...

I haven't tried it with gui apps, but just as a test (using the 'defaults' 
command line tool) I did ...

cd make
./configure --with-layout=standalone
make install
. ~/standalone/Makefile/GNUstep.sh
cd ../base
./configure --with-config-file=./ --with-default-config=standalone.conf
make install

mv ~/standalone /tmp/x
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/tmp/x
/tmp/x/defaults read