Re: Best Linux distro for GNUstep?

[Martin Dietze]

On Thu, March 24, 2011, David Chisnall wrote:

> In the Linux world, almost nothing is actually written by the
> distribution authors.  The kernel comes from Linux, the core userland
> comes from the GNU project, and so on.  In Debian, for example, there is
> no distinction between things like GIMP and thinks like the Linux kernel -
> they are both provided via the same mechanism.  

This is true - in principle. However on Debian-based systems we
can use several repositories from which we install software. For
example, we have debian-multimedia.org from which we obtain
multimedia stuff more recent than what comes with the
distribution. (the same is now possible on RPM-based systems,
too, if you use tools like yum)

In my previous post I wrote: 

> So what would be really useful for proper distro integration
> would be not only providing packages of the GS libraries but
> also the whole suite of GS-based applications built against the
> most recent version of the libraries. Coming from the Debian
> world I'd see this kind of approach as an "experimental" and
> unofficial apt repository.

This implies that *in principle* providing this kind of service
is absolutely possible - setting up an apt (and/or yum)
repository for GNUstep in which more recent replacements for the
packages provided by the distros are provided. The problem here
is that there are subtle differences between the ways those
packages are packaged on different distros, even on Debian and
Ubuntu they are usually not the same.

This is all possible, but somebody has to do the work. I think
it would be a good start to establish a convention to maintain
distro-specific code like the `debian/' subdirectory or .spec
files in the source repositories (this would apply ideally bo
both GNUstep and GS-based apps). That would make maintenance
easier for third-party maintainers (who may but not need to be
the respective distro's maintainer for the GS packages).

At the moment we're still far from all this. And as long as we
don't improve (i.e. make access to recent ready-built packages
for distro users easy and seamless) acceptance is likely to
remain low.

Cheers,

M'bert

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