Re: [GSWHackers] Re: OGo/GNUstep cooperation Re: Re[2]: Frameworks integration

[Helge Hess]

On 03.03.2004, at 15:00, David Ayers wrote:
> From my point of view, the thread has been aiming at discrediting 
> GSWeb, GDL2 and it's authors and maintainers.

First: this has nothing to do with GDL2. This is neither part of SOPE 
nor are there other (free) libraries available containing the same 
functionality. OGo itself doesn't use any EOF 2+ features.

Also GSWeb was not discredited in anyway, indeed I explicitly 
acknowledged the work which already went into the project.

> The request for cooperation was a request for people to porting apps 
> to OGo frameworks incl. patches to make them work with gnustep-base 
> and -gdl2 and to incorporate SOPE code/features in the -gsweb 
> repository.

Wrong. The call for application was done to be able to actually compare 
the two frameworks in an unbiased way. And indeed the SOPE team offered 
to do the work in one direction.

> I have repeatedly downloaded the cvs version of OGo and have yet to 
> see it compile with -make and -base.

OGo compiles just fine with recent gstep-make (using that on Cocoa). As 
you probably know OGo itself uses gnustep-base, only an old snapshots.

> I'm not willing to volunteer my time on fixing the OGo build process 
> wrt -make and -base,

While we would like to see people help with a gstep-base port, this was 
never asked for in the current context (fortunately several GNUstep 
developers jumped to work on this).
As you know a part of the GNUstep/OGo cooperation "plan" was to replace 
OGo libFoundation with gnustep-base, so this will happen in any case. 
Apparently the SOPE part already works with gstep-base, but I didn't 
try myself.

> but I'm willing to respond to issues posted, esp. wrt -gdl2 and EOF 
> 4.5 compatibility.

Excellent. GDL2 is certainly interesting for users porting WO 4.5 
applications to any WO replacement (though unfortunately WO 4.5 users 
are very rare now due to obvious reasons).

> Yet I would avoid incorporating SOPE extensions (lest they are 
> trivial, non intrusive and fit well) in GSWeb proper or add any 
> dependencies within GSWeb.  An extension framework/library would be 
> possible which also mustn't reside in the savannah repository (in fact 
> the SOPE repository will probably be the best).

Extensions are only one part of the value of SOPE. The major one is the 
huge amount of work that went into optimizing and bug fixing it. As 
mentioned, NGObjWeb was already completely done from a WO API point of 
view before gnustep-web started out. That isn't to discredit 
gnustep-web developers, but its just a matter of fact that many more 
manyears of development went into SOPE.
Now you can question whether this is relevant or not - which is why we 
suggested comparisons.

> But to clearly state the situation of -gsweb and -gdl2:  They are both 
> active projects in development.

Never questions by anyone.

> The primary authors Manuel Guesdon and Mirko Viviani have both done a 
> tremendous job.

Just to make that clear: no one questions that. Indeed Mirko has 
written some other excellent software (the structured text framework) 
and we are pleased that he was willing to share that with OGo.

> The code base is in use in production environments, but is (IMO) not 
> in a state to be released to "users" yet.  We are grateful for 
> contributions and bug reports.  We currently have no time frame of 
> when the "user" stage will be achieved.

Consider SOPE. This will make you jump 10 steps ahead (AGAIN: not 
because gstep-web developers are less capable but just because way more 
time went into SOPE!). This helps *everyone*. Its "only" hard because 
you need to abandon code.

> To me and probably to others, it is important that both -gdl2 and 
> -gsweb are assigned to the FSF and reside in the main gnustep 
> repository.

If there is general agreement on that, there is no point in any further 
discussion. As mentioned SOPE is completely free software in any 
respects.

I also agree that it makes sense to let FSF take care of GDL2 due to 
the patent issues.

> I'm still in the process of auditing/testing in GDL2, tweaking and 
> filling in the blanks as I go along.  At the moment I'm working on a 
> request to allow GDL2 and GSWeb to build on Cocoa.  GDL2 should do 
> this now.  GSWeb still has issues which I hope to resolve soon.  I'm 
> also looking at EOEditingContext/EOUndoManager related issues wrt. 
> reports of MulleEOInterface.  Others are working on Adaptor issues.

This is great to hear. Note that SOPE already has excellent Xcode 
projects with proper prebindings for OSX as well as SOPE:X which are 
extensions to make OSX development with SOPE even better.
Another thing you gain for free with SOPE.

> Yet as you have clearly stated that you will not assign the copyright, 
> this maybe superfluous.

Correct, though unfortunate.

> If you wish to use our code, feel free, the FSF grants you the LGPL 
> for our library code.

We'll do. GDL2 is probably the next thing to make people happy asking 
for EOF/MacOSX support. Its great to hear that you want to work with us 
on this, so finally we have anothing thing to share.

Thanks for your not-so-emotional comments,
  Helge
--
http://docs.opengroupware.org/Members/helge/
OpenGroupware.org