Re: Solution for the scrolling bug?

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi Tobias,

thanks for being interested in GNUstep!

Tobias Braun wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I was advised on the IRC channel (which unfortunately seems almost dead) to 
> post my question on the mailing list, so here we go:

Well, IRC is low-volume, but people peek in there. I can't connect from 
work for example. Also GS people are spread across the globe, so there 
are several timezones!!

I just released an updated version of TalkSoup, so connecting to IRC 
with a GS native application is fine again :)

> On my Arch Linux system, the most recent stable GNUstep version (installed via 
> pacman, the standard Arch package manager) exhibits a scrolling bug. From what 
> I read by browsing the mailing list archives, I understand that the stable 
> version of GS is not compatible with recent Cairo versions. This means I have 
> to install a newer, unstable version of GS to get it to work.

You may ask to backport this patch:

https://github.com/gnustep/back/commit/388977210b43275f8ef2fa4623a7c416e1a6b55f#diff-02f0b547c2779d25cff89672135f20e3

it should be pretty easy, file a bug to Arch Linux. They shouldn't use 
the last GS with a too modern Cairo: either they install also an older 
cairo or, better, backport this patch, should be easy.

I can run on cairo 1.14.0 without problems nowadays.


> 1. Arch has a system called AUR for compiling packages from source. Should I 
> create AUR scripts for everything I install from source, or is this not 
> recommended/necessary?

It is your taste. If you have AUR packages for GNUstep and they work, 
use them.
You can easily install "core stuff@ and then add non-packaged apps. But 
I wouldn't mess with mixing core libraries between packaged and 
self-compiled frameworks.

Self-compiling stuff is not hard. It is a matter f taste.


> 2. It appears that the default compiler for Arch is gcc. Is it necessary or 
> recommended to use clang instead for GS?

No, it is not necessary. My advice is to use the system one. Clang 
supports some more modern Obj-C features, if you don't need them you 
don't need clang. Depends of your usage of GNUstep. If you are porting 
Mac code or just like to code and use those new features, your choice.
> 3. Should I install clang via pacman?
>
> 4. Will installing clang interfere with the rest of the system? Will it 
> effectively replace gcc for everything I am going to compile by default? How 
> will build scripts know whether to use clang or gcc?

I prefer using packages for stuff like that if they are available and of 
good quality.
It should not interfere with the rest of the system.
> 5. How is GNUstep development organized? What branches are there apart from the 
> stable releases and where can I find them?
>
> 6. If anyone is wondering why I opted for Linux instead of e.g. FreeBSD: I 
> tried to install that first, but 10.1-STABLE wouldn't even load the kernel 
> image, it'd just freeze while trying to do so. 11.0-CURRENT would start the 
> actual init procedure, but after a few pages of text, it'd stop with a weird 
> error message which I don't remember right now. I guess there's not much I can 
> do about that, can I?

Thats a FreeBSD problem, ask "them". In any case "weird error" is not 
useful for debugging :) You can also try NetBSD or OpenBSD. GNUstep 
works fine on both of them and is on par with Linux nowadays.

> I know that's a lot of questions. I hope someone can help me get a clearer 
> picture of how these things work on Linux systems. At the moment, there's just 
> a lot of confusion in my head.

Patience and things will fit together bit after bit.

Riccardo