Re: GS on Windows installation report

[stefan]

First, let me say, that I did not wanted to offend the GNUstep on Windows
installation package as I really appreciate its existence :-) Treat my report
only as a test of the current state of GS on Windows and as opening of a
discussion.

Citát Wim Oudshoorn <woudshoo@xs4all.nl>:

> Stefan Urbanek <stefan@agentfarms.net> writes:
> 
> > Hello,
> >
> > Here is a short report of gnustep installation attempt on MS
> > windows. I was trying to be a bit ignorat while installing it and I
> > did not RTFM. I will use 'hints' to denote where I used my knowledge
> > for the unobvious things.
> 
> Good idea, however I don't know if GNUstep on windows is in a state
> to approach so naively.  From your experience it obviously isn't,
> but maybe implementation wise it isn't ready either.
> Note that I genuinely don't know, maybe after all the installation
> troubles it works perfectly, maybe it doesn't.
>

I agree, it is not in the state to approach it the way I did. On the other hand,
how do the others know?

> > Then I returned to the home page and downloaded the GNUstep
> > installer .exe file and run it. OK, Accept, OK, OK ...
> > Finish. Result was that I have seen nothing, neither icon on the
> > desktop (would be nice for new users, even it is annoying for
> > experienced users).
> 
> Ah, but the installer is not targetted at end users.
> Also, because it only contains make + base I can't see
> any point in adding a desktop icon.  
>

If it is not targetted at end users, then what is the point of having it if
anyone can install MinGW + gnustep? Again, do not take that as offense here,
just a question for thinking about it.

Do I describe the installer correctly if I say that it installs: "GNUstep basic
runtime for GNUstep servers"? Or what would be the best description of the
installer?
 
> > serious, I found it in the Start menu under GNUstep, however the icon
> > was some blue M with MSys label, so I was a bit uncertain whether it is
> > what i want. I launched it and got a terminal. What to do now? I have
> > terminal only - perhaps something went wrong?
> 
> This comes back to the same point as above.  Probably it should be made
> clearer that the installer is meant for developers who know what they
> are doiing.
>

Perhaps yes. But why only developers? I think that someone can give an example,
how can the end user use the installer... Is there any GNUstep non-gui
application that can be installed this way?

1. install GNUstep from the windows installer
2. install application from another installer
3. run the application as windows service or something similar

Is there something useable like that?

> > What would be the proper installation instructions for GNUstep on
> > windows similar to "Visit the www.gnustep.org page and download this or
> > that. Run the installation program. Find GNUstep icon in Start and run
> > it. You are done and ready to run apps."?
> 
> I agree with you here.
> Here follow some ideas (just brainstorming)
> 
> * We have 3 different usages of gnustep
> 
> ** End users who will just run applications.  
>    They will need:
> 
>    + base library
>    + gui library
>    + back
>    + applications
> 
>    But not
> 
>    - headers 
>    - sources
>    - msys
>    - compiler
> 

Yes, the end-users that do not even have to know about GNUstep. Let us call the
GNUstep distribution as "GNUstep Runtime Environment".

> ** Developers who make GNUstep applications
>    They will need
>    
>    + make
>    + base library
>    + gui library
>    + back
>    + headers
>    + msys
>    + compiler
> 
>    But not
> 
>    - sources
> 

Let us call this "GNUstep Development Environment"

> ** Contributers to GNustep 
>    They will need
> 
>    + all of the above
>    + GNUstep sources
> 

Call it as you like :o) In fact this is: "GNUstep Development Environment +
GNUstep sources"

> What we have now is the "Contributers" part, but only for base.
> The reason that gui is not included in the Windows installer is
> the simple fact that I haven't had any luck with installing
> gui on windows.  Note that I did not try very hard, if
> there are no simple instructions which work out of the box
> I give up.  
> Reasons for this are that:
> * I don't use gui
> * I don't own a windows machine, so I have to do this at work
>   and can't spent a lot of time on this.

Finally as I have installed windows on my laptop. However I do not know much
about windows development, neither much about the the build+installation
process. Therefore what I can do is to do testing. :-/

> 
> 
> So let's say that we want to have the end user installer,
> what needs to be done?
> 
> * Someone write unambigious instructions on how to compile
>   gui and back given that the windows installer has installed
>   make and base.
>   These instructions should be basically a shell script.
> 
>   This allows us to create an installer for developpers
>   containg make+base+gui+back
> 


Is it possible to do that from official GNUstep installation instructions +
MinGW README?

> * After that we can create a end-user installer.
>   However note that the end-user installer is not very
>   usefull if there are no applications.
>   So we need at least one application that can be packaged
>   on windows.  
> 

Why no applications? "GNUstep Development Environment" has two! :-) I think that
is enough for the beginning.

Note that any usage of terminal should be eliminated. Therefore I should be able
to (at least):

1. install gnustep dev env.
2. open project center and create new application
3. launch the application from PC

>   So for the end user the experience is:
> 
>   * Run GNUstep-Deployment installer
>   * Run Application-Installer
> 
>  
> * The next step will be to create an "Installer" builder,
>   either as part of the "make" package or as a separate program,
>   which on windows will output "Application" installers.
> 
> 
> All these steps take time.  And I can spare a little time but
> not a lot (see above).  So someone has to start, and this
> seems the usual problem with GNUstep :-(.
> 
> Also, as a final note, the situation on windows isn't too bad.
> There is at least a binary installer.  As far as I know 
> there isn't one for MacOSX. 

This reminds me, whether the installation instructions can be reused for any
platform? I mean, use some kind of "instructions and process for creating the
installer".

Stefan Urbanek
--
http://stefan.agentfarms.net