Re: GNUstep.sh / env sanity patches

[Armando Di Cianno]

On 2004-08-19 07:50:16 -0400 Dennis Leeuw <dleeuw@made-it.com> wrote:
> What I don't understand is why should you or any developer be forced 
> to put a 
> GNUstep based server in a standard un*x location?
> One writes a GNUstep-based server and one thus needs the entire 
> GNUstep 
> environment (in the case of a server atleast -make and -base). So it 
> could 
> just live within the GNUstep environment with e.g. just a init-script 
> to 
> start and stop the so clearly written server.
>
> What am I missing?
>
> Dennis

I for one will probably never install any bit of GNUstep into 
/usr/lib.  Pretty much right when I started the package management 
Gentoo thing wrt to GNUstep, I had convenient models to follow.  On 
Gentoo, KDE is installed into /usr/kde/<version>.<num>/, for example.  
(Disregard any notion that I think Gentoo is the "one true way" ... 
I'm just using examples from my own background/context).

So I see it, and I think most see that what your saying is true.  X11 
itself decided to pretty much hardcode itself into /usr/X11R6, at 
least in a "it's the right way" mentality kind of way, if not 
hardcoded-ness.  However, dynamic libraries are meant to be dynamic.  
That's kind of the point: they can be shared, they can be updated, 
they can be moved.

Now, for GNUstep's sake, your argument is true.  However as 
users/developers of GNUstep, who are on this mailing list, having this 
discussion, we are also inherently _evangelists_ of GNUstep.  We need 
to "woo" people to GNUstep.  We know it's easy to woo developers, once 
they grok the power of Obj-C + Foundation/AppKit, but pretend we need 
to woo project managers or (egad!) manager-manager types.  The ability 
to say "This will fully integrate into our UNIX solution" is a HUGE 
selling point, and furthers the growth of GNUstep.  But of course I 
see your point "JUST PUT IT IN /usr/GNUstep AND IT JUST WORKS!!", 
which makes sense to any of us.  But to expend the energy to make 
things slightly more reconfigurable wrt to the underlying system is 
worth it, I believe.  Consider it the cost of "woo".  If the cost is 
simply too high, we should say "No", however, it sounds like it is 
not.

__armando