Re: Flattened GNUstep structure?

[Jeff Teunissen]

The flattened directory structure makes sense. To run an app, you always run
the executable or script "MyApp.app/MyApp". The behavior of the (unflattened)
openapp is counterintuitive, IMO, by searching for the actual binary even
though MyApp.app/MyApp is a valid executable.

Why not simply add a variable to the makefile package? For example:

GNUSTEP_INSTALLATION_TYPE = deep

or

GNUSTEP_INSTALLATION_TYPE = shallow

defaulting to whichever the admin wants. This way, for systems (or, for
example, Network and Local apps on a network that has multiple architectures
in use) that want a deep tree, it will still work with a line addition or
change in the app's Makefile or ProjectCenter project.

A shallow default install tree still copes well with apps that have been
compiled deep. Of course, there are debugging issues, which can be handled by
a --debug parameter in the script that will wind up running deepened
executables. The converse is not true (cf. the failure of a deepened openapp
to deal with Window Maker applets like WMMail.app, in which the program in the
root of the app wrapper is the executable). This in itself is a reason to use
shallow by default.

IMO, Apps that run in the GNUstep environment should not (by default) be
required to use the GNUstep libs, be written in Objective-C, etc. openapp's
behavior in a deepened environment is clearly broken in this behavior.

-- 
| Jeff Teunissen - Pres., Dusk To Dawn Computing - deek at dusknet.dhs.org
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| Core developer, The QuakeForge Project        http://www.quakeforge.net/
| Specializing in Debian GNU/Linux           http://dusknet.dhs.org/~deek/