Re: gnustep-make and NSPathUtilities patch

[Sheldon Gill]

To re-iterate for Win32:

1) No .conf support. It's quite alien to the platform. The same information 
that we get from '/etc/GNUstep/GNUstep.conf' we should get from 
HKLM\Software\GNU\GNUstep. (see previous posts)

- Yes, you'll need some way to set up the registry keys. Ideally an installer. 
It's the way for the platform. Just deal with it. One day there'll be a nice 
downloadable installer for users to get the core platform (Foundation, AppKit 
and any required tools for a general users distribution)
If you're not sharing a set of libraries you should look at launchers, static 
linking and other compile-time solutions for your application as the best way 
out.

2) Home directories can have spaces in paths as far as -base and hence all 
GNUstep applications are concerned. The _only_ issue is with 'make' AFAIK.

- Anyone up for 'jam' instead?

3) This means gnustep-make becomes an optional install of interest only to 
developers. They'll need to do more to make the system build friendly. It's a 
tough life...

4) If all fully Developer-centric things go into /Developer then it's quite 
reasonable to expect static libraries to be there as well IMHO.

> By the way, DLLs need to be in the Tools folder in Win32 because this
> brain-dead system has only just one path, not one for binaries and
> another for libraries.

Umm... _no_!  Putting shared libraries into the Tools folder is even more 
brain-dead. Don't propagate the stupidity. There are better solutions.

It would seem to me that -base.dll and -gui.dll should be installed into 
%WINDIR%\System32 along with the required support libraries (libtiff etc) and 
all other libraries be found via the bundle mechanisms which can be made more 
win-friendly.

> Thanks a lot for this work, tell us if you need help porting it to Win32.

Thank you for the offer. If I need to I'll take you up on it.
On the other hand; if you need changes for your commercial applications I _am_ 
a consultant at reasonable rates ;)


Regards,
Sheldon