Re: Extremely poor quality of GNUStep applications

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi,

On 04/26/11 05:47, Lucas Holt wrote:

When we first discussed SWI (years ago) the concept of an "app store" was already there, long before Apple put it in on the Macintosh.

We have an intermediate problem which would be an installer and/or a way of building packages from source.

One of the never implemented apps of GAP is an installer. The two things should work together.

Regarding distribution of source, why not standardize on one of the many Linux or BSD distribution systems.  It's not necessary to reinvent the wheel.  Something like apt-get, rpm, or something more ports like might be a good fit.  An Etoile based gui could then wrap around the standard underlying distribution system to hide it from the user.  Many linux projects already distribute source as packages.  

One could argue that this should be handled at the OS distribution level though.  It seems reasonable to encourage a Etoile + GNUstep desktop OS environment.  At one point, I had thought about going down this road with my BSD project, but I gathered many users preferred a Linux derived system (which makes sense in this context). I think this task is outside the scope of the GNUstep community proper though.

Well, I think that it should be an option more than RPM or DEBs. If one wants to use the packages provided by their *nix distribution (or even windows NSIS packages) then fine. Nothing against that.
However those package system have a lot of constraints. They do not offer the OpenStep Installer.app experience (even the Mac one is not so good - think about uninstalling). Furthermore GAP's installer meant to handle multiple architectures in one package.
Also, the Installer could be used on lesser environments without a full-fledged distribution behind it, like for example an environment on a netbook or mini-pc.

GNUstep packages are sometimes packaged to comply with certain requirements of the distributions (the most known example being Debian).

That said, it is indeed a redundant application and currently it can be done without, that is the reason why GAP did not put more resources on it yet (and returns to the planning stage from time to time). Only a skeleton exists.


Riccardo