Re: Package building

[Andreas Fink]

> On 20 Nov 2019, at 08:59, Johannes Brakensiek <johannes@brakensiek.info> 
> wrote:
> 
> Hey Ivan,
> 
> thank you for your work and your explanations!
> 
> On 20 Nov 2019, at 3:10, Ivan Vučica wrote:
> 
>> Now... developers may need updated versions when developing their apps. I 
>> remember Debian not shipping with NSViewController or NSWindowController 
>> when I first came around -- but on the other hand, when I would cut a 
>> release, an updated .deb would follow. (Not to mention our source code 
>> became much more discoverable, so seeing if a class is missing is much 
>> easier too.)
>> 
>> So when a developer needs a newer version so they can prepare a source 
>> tarball for Debian to integrate... they can talk to us. We cut our release, 
>> a Debian maintainer (e.g. Yavor) picks it up, the app gets picked up too, 
>> everyone happy.
>> 
>> Yes, I would say developers are very welcome to advocate with maintainers 
>> for a release if not cutting one blocks their app's release. :-)
>> 
>> And at this time, I am still here to help component maintainers with a 
>> release. I may not do it on a tight schedule, but eventually I’ll find an 
>> evening or two to tackle this kind of request.
>> 
>> Do you have a specific anecdote about something you wanted up to date, as a 
>> binary, which wasn’t in your favorite distro?
> 
> The problem simply is that f.e. Debian ships libs that are build with GCC and 
> thus are missing any of the new language features. I understand you are doing 
> this for compatibility with other processor platforms. But this leads to the 
> problem that any app developer who wants to build a new app based upon the 
> clang ABI has to build and ship everything on his own. I really think this is 
> a show blocker for attracting new developers (or even users). Or did I miss 
> anything here?
> 
> Johannes
> 


I can completely agree on this statement. Due to modern code using ARC 
everywhere, the gnustep coming with Debian (which is  my main deployment 
platform) is usually a problem. I always have to make sure its not installed 
and install my own packaged version. On the other hand I have not seen anyone 
using ObjectiveC without ARC these days.. Its nice to have for nostalgia but 
ARC has solved a million problems for me in my code over the last decades. So 
today, I would not even think to do anything with gnustep without clang.

Having a gnustep which works with arc and without arc would be ok. but shipping 
packaged versions with libraries which can not work with ARC is a show stopper.

And when GNUStep wants to continue following the development of OSX's platform, 
ARC is there since more than a decade and everyone depends on it. So if anyone 
wants to port OS X code to Linux and considers GNUStep as a logica platform, 
then ARC support is a must.