Re: Windows and GnuStep

[Robert Slover]

Hello Andy,

I think your frustration may be rooted in a misunderstanding of the 
following quote from the "clarifications" citation:

> Applications which use Foundation (AKA GNUstep-Base) exclusively are 
> portable to nearly any posix compliant OS, as well as Windows (using 
> Cygwin or MingW).

GNUstep, in keeping with OpenStep and MacOS X, distinguishes between 
"Applications" and "Tools".  "Tools" are generally command-line apps 
and servers with no GUI.  "Applications" use the application runloop 
and generally involve a GUI (and thus, link against GNUstep-gui as well 
as GNUstep-base).  It is unfortunate in the quote above that the author 
chose to use the word "applications" in its more general sense.   
Substitute the word "projects" for "applications" in the citation above 
and the meaning becomes much more clear.

From reading the newsgroup, the current state of things appears to be 
that -make and -base work rather well on Windows, and -gui is getting 
there.  Someone is shipping a product (beta, I think) with a GUI, but 
it uses only -base and uses native Windows libraries for the GUI 
(NovaMind, IIRC).  I've seen screenshots of GNUstep GUI apps running on 
Windows, but don't know anything about how well they work.

I've no personal experience with the current state of GNUstep on 
Windows -- the newest version of Windows I have installed anywhere on 
my own hardware is 3.1a, just because it lives on another partition 
I've never been bothered with enough to wipe.  (It also holds my 
Borland PASCAL and Paradox installations if I ever need them for 
anything -- not in the last 8 years -- so likelihood diminishing).

I've noticed a few guys are focusing on GNUstep on Windows support, and 
while I am sure many here appreciate their efforts, I suspect a 
significant portion of the community is not even in a position to help. 
 I couldn't try the Windows installer even if I wanted to, and others 
will have Windows installed on a separate partition of their primary 
development machine, which is unlikely to be running Windows most of 
the time.  Headway will be made more quickly when someone who really 
needs and/or wants GNUstep-gui to work well on Windows is able to pitch 
in and help -- those of us with mostly non-Windows programming 
backgrounds aren't going to be able to contribute in this area.  Even 
bug reports (good ones) are more help than many of us can lend.

--Robert