Re: GNUstep installation, was Compiling from scratch.

[Ian Jones]

On 2003-10-26 12:58:37 +0000 Pete French <pete@twisted.org.uk> wrote:

> > Even better, the configuration script could offer to download a 
> > known-to-work version of the required librari(es), then build and install 
> > them somewhere in the gnustep environment. All automated.
>
> Hmm, I dont like this idea for the simple reason that its putting a copy
> of the libraries somewhere other than where the OS expects them, so if (for
> example) I install GNustep on the system I get one version of libtiff in
> the GNustep tree. If I then at some point later install some other package
> which also installs libtiff in the correct place for that system then I
> now have two, possibly different, versions of libtiff installed.
> And all without me knowing! Then depending on the link path I pick up one
> or the other. Sounds like a recipe for lots of trouble. The only way I can
> see this being a good idea is to do the build in the actual source tree and
> then staticly link against the GNUstep stuff, so that the libraries never end
> up anywhere than another program will try and link them.
>
> -bat.
Personally I'm not keen on either of these, 1) results in intefearing with the 
users system and possibly breaking applications that were compiled with an old 
version of some library and us overwriting it with a newer library?
and 2) would mean a very large gnustep tree that included external librarys 
that are needed so we can statically compile against them when half of them 
probably already exist on most current linux/bsd systems.

I think my approach would be to early on in the build script check if 
dependancies are met by the system, if critical ones aren't met then bail out 
presenting the user with clear explanition, wheather a required library is 
missing or too old, or the lack of functionality if the user wishes to continue 
the build without certain components. I think let them take care of their 
system and just let gnustep build script only worry about telling the users 
what it needs to build the environment, at least for now.

I know a lot of effort has been put in by people to create build guides for 
gnustep, if someone could give me some links to save me looking around that 
would be great, then I think I would like to integrate some of it into a build 
script, maybe this will make the build guides obsolete, but is this such a bad 
thing?

Regards,

Ian (Ian_J on #gnustep)