Re: Objective-C 2.0 and other new features in Leopard

[Aria Stewart]

> > - an easy installation and setup process for GNUstep is essential  
> > in my opinion. It must be easy for the curious "chance customer"  
> > to get an experience of GNUstep.
>
> Most *BSD and Linux distributions come with decent packaging  
> systems these days. ubuntu isn't that bad in this regard, but  
> currently comes with base-1.13, and gui-0.11. This is several  
> versions behind, IIRC. Etoile is missing entirely (just checked).  
> Ideally, there'd be gubuntu or etoile-ubuntu next to ubuntu,  
> kubuntu and edubuntu.

I think that's a really excellent primary goal, and a long-term one.  
Getting a whole system functional, and being complete enough to feel  
good releasing it as a potential primary-use operating system for  
people is work of exactly the sort that needs to get done. ubuntu's a  
great base for it, too.

As far as marketing, documentation and cohesivity go, I can point out  
a frustration -- I've been a member of this mailing list for years  
now, done some ObjC coding, maintained packages of the base Gnustep  
components for my distribution -- and I had no idea what Etoile is  
until just now.  I'm not sure what this is pointing out, but it's a  
problem. Things are so fractured that keeping up isn't possible.

Making gnustep.org be an incubator for ~all Gnustep projects the way  
the Gnome project does, with relatively open CVS access, unofficial  
modules in their version control, and just being a central  
repository, and have inclusion in the main Gnome distribution being a  
goal for a lot of developers does a lot. It's fostering a lot of  
community there, and Gnustep seems to be a lot of projects that live  
on a single author's personal web page, move between sites with no  
warning, and disappear often. Fixing that would help immensely.

Fixing that would also change the nature of the gnustep project in a  
similar fashion as creating a Gnustep variant of ubuntu: Full system  
usability, in an inclusive rather than a "just a base" sense.

My two cents. Someone please find me a clone so I can devote a copy  
of me to making things reality, too, eh?

Aria