GNUstep is not the problem [was: install hell]

[Dennis Leeuw]

Hi Travis and others,

It's a pitty that GNUstep gets blamed for user ignorance. I am growing tired of 
the "blame GNUstep" attitude. Maybe it is not fair to write this into a reply 
to your e-mail, and therefor I apologise. I just want this of my chest. So 
don't take this too personal.

I have build GNUstep numerous of times to be able to write the GNUstep Build 
Guide (documents.made-it.com). And yes I have run into troubles, when doing 
things different then the default way. But that's is NOT a GNUstep problem, 
that doesn't make GNUstep a real pain. I have build GNOME when it was pre-1.0.0 
and even when it was 1.0.0 it was a pain to build. Compared to that GNUstep 
even in it's 0.8.x carnation is a breeze (1.7.x for make/base).

The fact that you source the GNUstep.sh file in the wrong location, or not all. 
is not a GNUstep problem, but a lack of knowledge, don't blame GNUstep for 
that. The fact that you mention "Why can't GNUstep just put libraries where the 
rest of the system puts them?" indicates that you don't know how GNUstep works 
and what it is. I don't blame you for that, but to put the blame on GNUstep is 
not fair.

GNUstep is a little community with a small number of developers working VERY 
hard on it. Don't forget that this is all done in private time. People work on 
this for fun.

What I would like to ask is another attitude towards problems people encounter. 
Starting an e-mail with "install hell" and "Installing GNUstep components is a 
real pain" is not gonna help. It might frustrate people devoting their spare 
time building, in my humble opinion, the best system around to work on GNUstep. 
It's not nice to everytime have to defend yourself, to prove people wrong in 
their ideas that GNUstep is the problem.

If you have a problem share it, ask for help without judging prematurely.

Sorry for this lengthy note. Just wanted to share this feeling.

Happy Stepping,

Dennis Leeuw



Travis Griggs wrote:

> I know others have mentioned this before. Installing GNUstep components is a 
> real pain. I just use GNUstep-make and GNUstep-base, and I'm amazed how 
> coupled and fragile they are. I get the 1.6.0 tarballs and install. I use 
> --prefix=/usr/local/GNUstep. With GNUstep-make, I also use the 
> --enable-flattened (sure do wish this was the default). I found that while I 
> need to be root to do the make install for both, if I'm root for any of the 
> other steps, it doesn't work. I found that if I tried to even make 
> alternative versions of base, things blew up. Obviously, I had to source the 
> common shell environment script which adds bazillion environment vars to get 
> base to build, _but_ if I tuned any of the vars (such as TOOL_INSTALL_DIR), 
> things broke downstream in weird ways. So the process in the end turned out 
> to be something like (maybe someone else will find it useful):
>
> tar -xvzf gsmaketarfile
> cd gnustep-make
> ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/GNUstep --enable-flattened
> make
> su -c "make install"
> cd ..
> rm -rf gnustep-make
>
> add the source /usr/local/GNUstep/System/Makefiles/GNUstep.sh to my 
> .bash_profile and relogin
>
> tar -xvzf gsbasetarfile
> cd gnustep-base
> ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/GNUstep (I found that if I accidently 
> included a -enable-flattened here... things broke)
> make
> su -c "make install"
> cd ..
> rm -rf gnustep-base
>
> add lines such as:
>
> export GNUSTEP_INSTALLATION_DIR=$GNUSTEP_USER_ROOT
> export TOOL_INSTALL_DIR=~/bin
>
> to my .bash_profile and relogin again
>
> And to top it all off, while I can build apps, I can't run them at any 
> terminals from within KDE. I get a
> travis@sumfin:~$ ExampleSetTest
> ExampleSetTest: error while loading shared libraries: libGSUnit.so.1: cannot 
> open shared object file: No such file or directory.
>
> The weird thing... if I flip to a console, it works fine! Looking at it more, 
> it appears that any terminal window under KDE has the GNUSTEP vars set, but 
> LD_LIBRARY_PATH cleared, if I source the GNUstep.sh, it gets set fine. Why 
> can't GNUstep just put libraries where the rest of the system puts them?
>
> --
> Travis Griggs
> Key Technology
> One Man's Pink Plane is Another Man's Blue Plane
>
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