Re: Online GNUstep Application Database

[Damian Steer]

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Alexander Malmberg <alexander@malmberg.org> writes:

> Damian Steer wrote:
>> As a followup to this it would be nice if the archive had downloadable
>> binaries...
>> 
>> Which leads me to the point of this post. To what degree is this
>> possible in GNUstep?
>
> Sure, they're possible. Practical is a different matter. ;-)

:-)

> As long as you stay with single-arch binaries, you won't have any (new)
> problems. Some distros already do this with GNUstep apps. No harder to
> manage than normal binaries, but also no better.

No better? That seems a little unfair. GNUstep apps are nicely
self-contained, whereas linux apps will install bits in /usr/bin,
/usr/share/pixmaps, /usr/share/mimelnk etc. Untarring in / is not
always desirable (or possible). (I should add that mozilla and java
are self contained).

>> I notice that I have 'GNUSTEP_FLATTENED="yes"',
>> but seem to recall something like fat binary support in the past (I
>> guess flattening is the default now?). Being able to unpack and use a
>> single .app, even if it is on the 'chubby' side, would be very
>> nice.
>
> If GNUSTEP_FLATTENED is no, you get something like 'fat binaries', if
> you can figure out a way of building them (short of manually building
> lots of .app:s on different systems and manually assembling them).

This is really what I was asking about. Is it practical? Would the
package need to say 'You need gui version x, back version y' etc? And
although I stated above that apps are self contained a brief survey of
Local/Library/Libraries suggests that isn't the case for MusicBox and
GNUMail. In which case I guess tarring a .app won't always work as
nicely as it does on OS X.

> ldd tells you which libraries it would be linked to if you ran it now on
> your system. Thus, it includes indirect references (like linungif, which
> is probably linked to by -gui). To get a list of direct references, do
> "objdump -x Foo.app/Foo" and look at the "Dynamic section" part.
>
> - Alexander Malmberg

Ah - didn't realise it included indirect refs.

I thought it might be a neat way to distribute apps, but perhaps it
would be too difficult for anything other than the simplest
applications.

Cheers,

Damian
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