GNUstep on Gentoo: how many of us are there?

[fafhrd]

Considering the abominable, bit rotted GNUstep ebuilds in portage, I was curious as to how many of us out there are "rolling our own" ebuilds for GNUstep?

I've been working on cleaning gnustep stuff up heavily for my personal use, and hopefully one day Gentoo dev's will get around to updating stuff! ... please....

I'm almost done with a 'stable"/usable and fairly full-app featured ebuild suite....here's a preview:

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mudra root # ls /usr/local/portage/*
/usr/local/portage/eclass:
gnustep-new.eclass

/usr/local/portage/gnustep-apps:
aclock  addresses  affiche  gnumail  gworkspace  terminal

/usr/local/portage/gnustep-core:
gnustep-back  gnustep-base  gnustep-env  gnustep-gui  gnustep-make

/usr/local/portage/gnustep-dev:
gorm  projectcenter

/usr/local/portage/gnustep-libs:
gnustep-artresources  pantomime

/usr/local/portage/profiles:
use.local.desc

for seasoned *step'ers out there, there's obviously a lot more packages I'm writing ebuilds for ... I wanted to get these happy and ready to go, as they represent the apps I use the most

For most packages, I'm including the latest stable release, and I make releases of CVS pulls about twice a week (yo: GWorkspace is hot these days ... )

.... and out of curiousity: is there even any 'official" Gentoo devs working on GNUstep stuffs? *ahem* ... if ya need one, you know where to look ... I know us *step'ers are the niche within the niche, but we like our gentoo too, ya know....

[dopey]

For a while I wasn't even bother with ebuilds. Just manually configuring and building into /opt/GNUstep. I stopped though. Just haven't had the time I wanted to do more with GNUstep, and I still have my handy NeXT Turbo for IB and PB usage .

I'll probably get them set up again sometime when my work responsibilities have gotten less busy in oh, 7 years or so . Hehe, actually I hope to get back to playing with GNUstep sometime later this year.

[fafhrd]

yeah ... I wouldn't say GNUstep is unstable per se, but it's one of those projects where CVS pulls are usually more stable than releases ...

... i have this conception that anything related to an idea Steve Jobs had a hand in becomes mental crack ... i love my GNUstep like some Mac-heads i know *love* there Macs ...

so, considering average lurker/poster ratios on forums, and the amount of GNUstep posting in the gentoo forums spread out over time, i'm convinced there has to be others out there ... in numbers ... waiting for ebuilds

[fafhrd]

i'm selfishly bumping this, so it'll be at the top of the view list

... there has to be more than two of us........_someone_ wrote those old ebuilds at some point.....

[MikePikeFL]

Well I run GNUstep, but sorry to disappoint, I haven't written any ebuilds. I've just migrated from Slackware (this past weekend) after running Gentoo on many servers at work for over a year. I've run it on my laptops for a while too, and now after 5 years of Slackware upgrades, finally my main desktop at home. So I was running GNUstep on Slackware and just tried to get what I had working again. Most of it is, just a few minor things (like the clock I was using, but I actually like the new one better).

[fafhrd]

it's okay ... I'm writing ebuilds here like mad ... i have to control the urge to slam the GNUstep CVS server on savannah hourly

I was playing with GNUstep running under XDirectFB today, while running an xscreensaver in the root window with happy "true" translucent windows....meh it's fun to overheat the CPU sometimes

I think those users out there who are okay with a relatively stable, but in development application environment, and run Gentoo would really appreciate, for example, weekly "hey-wow-it's-stable" ebuilds of the gnustep-core, and the most stable, cvs or release, versions of apps. I wish I knew a better way to get dev's attentions on this ... I'll happily maintain the gnustep ebuilds for gentoo ... but last time I poked around on IRC trying to get someone's attention for help on how to become a dev, the dev channel was closed to me

... i should get my ebuilds submitted on bugs.gentoo.org soon ... hopefully then someone will realize I'm not just talking out of my ass here ...

[anyNiXwilldo]

"I was playing with GNUstep running under XDirectFB today, while running an xscreensaver in the root window with happy "true" translucent windows."

Say it isn't so? PLEASE tell me right click context menus worked in GNUstep on the framebuffer? PLEASE? If so, this is bigger than the transit of Venus.

[fafhrd]

yeah, it worked ....

I was using XDirectFB, and everything worked perfectly.

... what problems did you expect? it is an X server and all ...

[anyNiXwilldo]

"... what problems did you expect? it is an X server and all ..."

The last time I played with XDirectFB, (it is soo fast!!!) everything worked except for right click context menus. Me thinks it is time to play with DirectFB again. I don't need 3d acceleration for anything anyway.

[fafhrd]

oh, right on ...

and actually last time I check the directfb.org website, 3D something or other had made its way into CVS ... i do not think it has to do with the XDirectFB X server, as the straight framebuffer stuff generally confuses me

but yeah... i tend to be a very mobile user, and XDirectFB just isnt' for me, but it certainly worked acceptable for general GUI use ... with the eye candy of transparent windows....

[screwjack]

hey fafhrd - just wanted to say thanks. your efforts ARE appreciated. I'm also a gnustep on gentoo user, although I have to admit (sheepishly) I just did a full install of the GNUstep liveCD based on morphix and am currently putting it through it's paces. So far, so good but certainly not good enough to make me abandon gentoo altogether. I'd rather 'emerge' than 'apt-get' any day.

I'm sure I've said it before in this forum, but it really mystifies me why there isn't more interest generally in GNUstep. maybe I'm just overly biased towards the whole NeXT thing...

[plate]

Maybe there just isn't a whole lot of knowledge about it. I wouldn't know about GNUstep at all if I hadn't remembered half a line from an interview that Daniel Robbins gave two years ago. I gave it a spin on FreeBSD briefly, but couldn't quite make heads or tails of it, and dropped it again.

Then I bumped into some of the GNUstep developers at the FOSDEM in Brussels this year, and they confirmed that GNUstep is not dead - as I had sort of assumed it was - but on the contrary very much alive and on its way to real progress. I was rather impressed, since I had no idea that there were already applications taken from the Mac realm and recompiled for use on x86. I don't think many people know this, GNUstep is just not exposed enough.

Unfortunately, the attitude towards Gentoo isn't very friendly with some of the GNUstep crowd:

SuSE/Novell, RedHat/Fedora and Gentoo are no better, they are not supporting or mentioning GNUstep.

But I guess they can't really be blamed for the Gentooistas' lack of attention for GNUstep. Whoever picks up the gauntlet of maintaining a good level of awareness for this remarkable project inside Gentoo Linux better be -vv about it - do good and to communicate forget not.

Which reminds me: there was a call for developers to help with the GNUstep herd back in November, have any of you volunteered for that? Talk to the desktop-wm project manager Brandon Hale if you'd like to contribute to a better representation of GNUstep in Gentoo Linux.

[screwjack]

Maybe there just isn't a whole lot of knowledge about it. I wouldn't know about GNUstep at all if I hadn't remembered half a line from an interview that Daniel Robbins gave two years ago.

Probably so, although I have noticed several project recently (mostly in their very early stages) that have given me renewed hope that this is changing (e.g. Backbone, Genstep, SimplyGNUstep). Thanks for the link to the Robbins interview, I have to say that I wholeheartedly agree with his comments. KDE and Gnome are excellent and have come very far, but for me they are both starting to feel bloated and a bit rigid. In addition, it seems to me that GNUstep has the most mature set of tools in place (with much respect to the Mono and DotGNU projects) to provide valuable enterprise-class apps to the business sector.

I gave it a spin on FreeBSD briefly, but couldn't quite make heads or tails of it, and dropped it again.

I think this is a pretty common response. While I view the flexibility and very non-Windows like nature of WindowMaker one of GNUstep's great strengths, it probably puts many uninitiated users off.

Then I bumped into some of the GNUstep developers at the FOSDEM in Brussels this year, and they confirmed that GNUstep is not dead - as I had sort of assumed it was - but on the contrary very much alive and on its way to real progress. I was rather impressed, since I had no idea that there were already applications taken from the Mac realm and recompiled for use on x86. I don't think many people know this, GNUstep is just not exposed enough.

Very true. Given the seemingly high level of interest in running OSX on x86 it seems to me that GNUstep is a natural fit but again not too many people know about it.

Unfortunately, the attitude towards Gentoo isn't very friendly with some of the GNUstep crowd:

SuSE/Novell, RedHat/Fedora and Gentoo are no better, they are not supporting or mentioning GNUstep.

But I guess they can't really be blamed for the Gentooistas' lack of attention for GNUstep. Whoever picks up the gauntlet of maintaining a good level of awareness for this remarkable project inside Gentoo Linux better be -vv about it - do good and to communicate forget not.

Which reminds me: there was a call for developers to help with the GNUstep herd back in November, have any of you volunteered for that? Talk to the desktop-wm project manager Brandon Hale if you'd like to contribute to a better representation of GNUstep in Gentoo Linux.

I'd be lying if I said I hadn't been remised in my duties toward contributing to this project which I have so much admiration for. Insert the usual tired excuses about the seemingly endless death-march coding sessions my day job requires of me here. I appreciate the links and will endevor to make more of an effort to perhaps add something of value rather than just being a parasite. At the very least encourage others to try GNUstep. To that end, I hope it would not be considered poor form to repeat the link you included in your post but more specifically promoting the GNUstep liveCD so that anyone interested might be able to check it out without having to make the commitment to emerging all of the individual packages themselves.

some more links:
http://www.gnustep.org/
http://www.roard.com/gnustep/GNUstep-brochure.pdf
http://www.roard.com/gnustep/Booklet.pdf

[fafhrd]

plate - thanks for the info ... I must've missed that GWN.

screwjack - yeah, i also constantly wonder why GNUstep doesn't get more press ... it's not just a "desktop environment" but a whole application framework, and that's what I really love about it ... I emailed the maintainer plate mentioned; hopefully we'll see some up to date ebuilds in portage soon.

[fafhrd]

Updating this mainly to bump it.

So, here's my progress on ebuilds I've written that I'm 100% happy with for GNUstep:

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mudra portage # ls *
app-gnustep:
aclock  addresses  affiche  cenon  gnumail  gworkspace  terminal

dev-gnustep:
gorm  projectcenter

eclass:
gnustep.eclass

gnustep-base:
gnustep-back-art   gnustep-base  gnustep-gui
gnustep-back-xlib  gnustep-env   gnustep-make

gnustep-extra:
artresources  cenon-library  pantomime

licenses:
Cenon

I had ebuilds in a structure like this:

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gnustep-core/
gnustep-libs/
gnustep-apps/
gnustep-dev/

I've restructured it as you see above, so that mainly it'll fit the same model as kde, gnome, xfce, with regards to *-base and *-extra ... kind of weird that Bundles and Frameworks are going to end up in *-extra, but that's alright with me. This only leaves the addition of dev-gnustep, which isn't too bad.

plate, or anyone, any more hints on how to contact dev's / maintainers / others to help me on this? I'd submit these to bugzilla, and will soon, but considering the extent of them, i'd like to get in touch with dev's ... dev's on irc seems to be always closed to talking for me ... like, the channel, not them ...

oh, and notice Cenon in app-gnustep above ... never used it before, it went free last year ... it's something like 8-10 year old OPENSTEP app that is still being maintained ... it's a pretty powerful structured vector art drawing app ... there's even an astrology module for it, that is also free, which should appear as an ebuild from me (hopefully) soon 'cause that's just awesome/fun in that emacs-style "lets-write-an-app-that-can-be-super-extensible' ...

[baetis]

Wow, great stuff, is there anyway you can post it somewhere soon? I can't wait to get my hands on it Currently I just roled my own ebuilds for the new 1.9.2 and the 0.9.3 stuff. If you need any help let me know.

Its a shame, cause you just *know* if gnustep and windowmaker were made to look/have the eye candy that MacOSX has it would be the newest greatest thing that everyone would want. Oh well.

Thanks again.

[fafhrd]

Yeah, got the newest stable release in there.

Considering time between stable releases is often long, and apps are often evolving with the newest cvs core commits, I'm trying to start making "weekly" cvs dropped tarballs. In that way, Gentoo GNUstep users can create their own framework for starting to give back to GNUstep. I think it's viable.

Basically, what I've done so far is create the gnustep-core ebuilds to be independant of the gnutesp.eclass. The core packages are moving to a point where they can almost be built w/o it each. I beleive this is to better support multiple backends, and even, multiple platforms.

I've gutted and cleaned up the eclass to not need so much f**kery, or at least, localize it. Frameworks (even talked bad about in GNUstep's filesystem.ps...) are pretty much busted in the current gnustep.eclass's setup, mainly becuase of sandboxing issues (well, package issues, the sandbox is a good thing ). [ $TAR_OPTIONS environment variable saved the day, as the GNUstep Makefiles do some hackery with using tar like cp, e.g tar cf - | (cd /somewhere; tar xf -) ... and permissions on symlinks were FREAKING OUT in the sandbox.

I'm not sure how long it's gonna take before I hear a response from the Desktop guy, but I hope he's receptive to the idea of revitalizing GNUstep on Gentoo.

Hrm. I'll try and post what I've done so far tomorrow night, or this weekend. Mainly, I was hoping to get dev status, or at least talk to a dev to do it for me, 'cause right now I have the cvs pulled releases on my web server, which isn't really hardy enough to take any sort of beating ... well, 'cept from me, 'cause it likes it when I do that.

[wglwill]

I'm not a gnustep user(yet), but your project sounds really interesting, I'm really looking forward to it. I recently read about gnustep and the application framework, it really looks nice to program for. I've been trying to get it installed, but I haven't been having a lot of luck. The ebuilds in portage aren't too terrific, I had to do some hackish things to get them to work and even then the resulting installation wasn't functional. I've been trying to compile the source packages now, but I'm still struggling with some issues. Some up to date and effective ebuilds would be terrific.

[baetis]

Hey, project center 0.4 was just released. Making some ebuilds now.

To get a nice install of gnustep you do have to do some stuff...

Heres a brief summary:

cp -R /usr/portage/dev-util/gnustep-make /usr/local/portage/dev-util
cp -R /usr/portage/dev-util/gnustep-base /usr/local/portage/dev-util
cp -R /usr/portage/dev-util/gnustep-back /usr/local/portage/dev-util
cp -R /usr/portage/dev-util/gnustep-gui /usr/local/portage/dev-util

Goto each one of them and just copy the latest ebuild to the same name just with 1.9.2 for base and make, and 0.9.3 for the others. You can update the dependencies while you're in there too. Then put these packages in your /etc/portage/packages.keywords file like this...

dev-util/gnustep-make ~x86
dev-util/gnustep-base ~x86
dev-util/gnustep-gui ~x86
dev-util/gnustep-back ~x86

Then emerge them in the order above (i think). After the file downloads (or before, which ever), go into each directory and do an ebuild <ebuild name> digest. For example, ebuild gnustep-back-0.9.3.ebuild digest, then the emerge.

Don't forget to do a -p before the emerge to make sure its going to install the latest stuff.

then run as root /etc/init.d/gnustep start (you can have this happen at startup with "rc-update add gnustep default")

then login and run /usr/GNUstep/System/GNUstep.sh.

You should then be able to follow the makefiles tutorial and the others on gnustep.org. I did similar things for gorm and project center. You'll pretty much have to do this for all things gnustep since the ebuilds are so out of date. Its worth it though to code with OpenStep and Objective-C. Project center was set to Werror which was causing portage to bail on it. I just removed it from the GNUmakefiles and emerged it. Worked fine.

Good luck.

[erwan]

Where con we find newest ebuilds? I just emerged it yesterday with the last ebuilds in the portage tree but there is a font problem, simply no text is displayed...

[fafhrd]

You can definitely quickly mod the old, old ebuilds with the newest package names to get you started.

I'm sort of let down by the general quality of the old ebuilds; even though I am using the format of the old eclass in the new ebuilds I"m writing. Just saying the ebuilds were a bit naive -- don't know when they were written exactly, but it was probably 'just to get it working'. I'm glad someone did though -- i'm not trying to put down anyone's work. They just need some refactoring.

I'm making sure documentation, and all appropriate tools get installed, with each ebuild. Often times, Documentation is extra, and thusly ignored. Yet, learning GNUstep is quite, quite handy for anyone new to it, with the docs, so I believe it's important. Also, many packages come with "extra" utilities that are INSANELY useful, but are "extra" 'cause they have "loose" or "hey, if you have package X installed, you can use utlity Y" dependencies.

Also, releases are stable, but the GNUstep devs are pretty good about committing working code to CVS, so much, and such that, after a while, CVS pulls are usually as stable and 'fresher' than the last release. The previous stable releases before the last ones were in february ... newer apps wouldn't even build with them.

I totally should've been called out on posting my ebuilds somewhere by this weekend -- as you can see, I have not. I took a well needed weekend sabbatical to Baltimore to visit a good friend. I swear, I'll post them. We'll try to build a GNUstep on Gentoo community of somekind. Things will be great and fun.

p.s. Golden West in Baltimore is possbily the hippest place to have breakfast.

[fafhrd]

erwan,

I've created support scripts, installing them under /usr/GNUstep/System/Tools/Gentoo (although there may be a slightly more appropriat spot, specifically for GNUstep on Gentoo, that will hopefully help people learn how to use the "defaults" program, or at least make them aware of it.

One of the scripts, for example, sets the system font for you. Another will switch what backend you are using.

I'm also going to find the freshest Preferences.app, and make sure that's in portage. Then people can use that, but sometimes having a script is nice as well.

[fafhrd]

here we go:

http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=54740

Please read the descriptions, and download all the files, if you decide to test thses.

I'll be adding more actual application packages after lunch.

[baetis]

Great! Thanks for the work. I'll test them all when I get off of work. If you need help with anything let me know.

[regeya]

Glad to see someone taking an interest in GNUstep, and glad to hear that other people think that both KDE and GNOME are getting too bloated and rigid.

I recently tried out GNOME 2.6, and was impressed enough to use it (and I was a longtime KDE zealot!) KDE needs to concentrate on usability issues for KDE 4, and GNOME is, well, doing too much user babysitting for its own good. GNUstep seems to be the best hope for FOSS users, IMHO. Not that many userland apps yet, but I've got to say that things have improved immensely in the last couple of years. Still a glacial pace, but a faster glacial pace, at least.