GNUstep in Windows 10 - Epic Fail

[Jay Versluis]

Hi everybody,

I thought I’d give GNUstep on Windows 10 another go. My goal is to be able to compile and run GNUstep applications on Windows, originally written with Xcode on the Mac. Right now it’s just a simple command line tool that uses only the Foundation framework. No fancy GUI windows. 

So I’m following the guides on GNUstep.org, where it tells me that for Windows, I need to download about 6 self-extracting files to get going. I’ve done that successfully, even though I can’t run Gorm or Project Center. Fine for now, the Shell is running so that’s a 33% success. All I want for now is to compile my trusty Hello World code from the command line and generate a stand-alone Windows app. I’m still at the "proof of concept” stage.

However, I guess I need clang and LLVM to compile for Objective-C 2.0 and ARC. Again, not a problem, I’ve downloaded both those sources using the MINGW shell and want to build them. The LLVM site says this can’t be done with gcc of course, and I need cmake. So I’m downloading that too, and building it using its own bootstrap tool, I’m getting an error. Sadly the tool does not tell me what’s wrong: it points me to the log file, which tells me everything went fine. But when I try to build cmake, naturally I get an error. Sigh.

Now here are my questions:

1.) Does GNUstep even run on Windows 10? Or am I trying the impossible?

2.) Those installers… how old are they, and what version Windows have they been tested with?

3.) Am I correct in assuming that all my efforts inside Windows need to be done inside MINGW? Or does this need to happen on the Windows command line?

4.) Even with all the time I’m pouring into this “tapping in the dark” experience, will I ever be able to compile a standalone command-line Windows app? What I mean is, is this actually possible? Has anyone successfully done it?

I’m still hopeful that I can utilise Objective-C for cross platform development. But if I’m beating a dead horse here, please let me know.

All the best,

JAY VERSLUIS