Re: GNUstep on Windows, "desktop" bundles...

[Wim Oudshoorn]

Alex Perez <aperez@student.santarosa.edu> writes:

> On Wed, 20 Oct 2004, Larry Cow wrote:
>
>> Alex Perez a écrit :

> gdomap definately needs to be servicized if it is going to be used (alexms 
> patch removes this requirement) because it requires administrative privs 
> to bind to ports. 

Hm, I never tried Alex's patch.  But as far as I know this patch
did not work under windows anyway.
>
> IMHO GNUstep should be installed into C:\Program Files\GNUstep. People do 
> not install it there because of the whole "space issue" but that space 
> issue is rendered irrelevant because NTFS retains the old 8-char 
> filenames. With this in mind, installing to C:\Progra~1\GNUstep is 
> perfectly safe.

Well, there are two parts for the space issue. 
(1) Deployment of GNUstep.  
(2) Building the GNUstep libraries themselves.  
    (or building in general).

For (1) spaces are not a problem.  
For (2) I think there is a problem.  It is not without a reason
that the readme of the windows installer warns against spaces
in the path.

>> Maybe this should be added on the wiki and brought to wider discussion 
>> (though I thinkmost gnustepers read this list)?
> Good idea. Want to start one?

I do read the list, but not the wiki.

>> 
>> >IMHO there should probably just be one installer, with some radios for 
>> >developer/runtime and also base/gui, unless there is a size issue.
>> >  
The option to install either the developer or runtime version
is quite doable.
We already have a version which can install a precompiled base.
(some tiny hacks to fixup some paths during installation.)
This functionality was added by Tom Koelman, and I will ask
the details when he is back from holiday.  
So a deployment version of base is very doable.  We have not
put effort in making a pure deployment installer because at the moment
I can not see what good a deployment installer is.  
(AFAIK there are no precompiled GNUstep applications available for
windows, so you need to compile the GNUstep applications anyway).

>> >
>> Unless the thing gets too big, that's probably better.

In this thread a question was raised how big the installer
becomes when it needs a complete mingw system etc.   
Well, look at the current base installer, it just contains that:-)
(and it is about 10Mb)

Oh and as a final remark.  If someone can post
instructions for compile gui which will work ;-(
I think Tom or myself will extend the current
installer to include gui as well. 
Note however that I definitely do not have the time,
nor motivation to figure out how to get gui working
under windows.  (I know I most probably can and
that the problems we encountered last time we tried
are probably very easy to solve, but I am really busy).

Wim Oudshoorn.