Re: GNUstep packaging by TWW tools

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 27 Dec 2006, at 12:35, T.J. Yang wrote:
> > > My plan
> > > 1. prepare gcc-4.1.1 for Solaris 10 intel (U2, 06/2006 version)   
> > > first and down port lower version solaris and sparc cpu.
> >
> > This is fairly straightforward ... I've done it for 32 bit and  
> > 64bit  solaris ... you shouldn't have any trouble.
>
> Great, would you mind to try out gcc-4.1.1 for GNUstep ?
> Currently I have 4.1.1 for Solaris 10 intel, it can compile  
> helloword.m
> but it failed the configure script when compiling gnustep-base.
> looks like I need to relocate objc/objc.h to a path that can be found.

I have no problem with gcc-4.1.1 ... here is the build information I  
used ...

gcc -v
Using built-in specs.
Target: i386-pc-solaris2.10
Configured with: ../configure --with-as=/usr/sfw/bin/gas --without- 
gnu-ld --with-ld=/usr/ccs/bin/ld --enable-shared --enable- 
languages=c,c++,objc --prefix=/home/cls/GNUstep/usr/local --with-pic
Thread model: posix
gcc version 4.1.1


> > One issue though ... the list of supported operating systems for  
> > HPMS  does not include ms-windows ... the whole point of this  
> > system is to  wrap all other systems inside a single toolset, but  
> > if it omits what  is arguably the second most important target  
> > operating system, then  it's probably not actually very useful.
> > I think it's therefore important to find out whether ms-windows   
> > support is available, or under development and near enough  
> > complete  for you to join in and perfect it.  If ms-windows  
> > support is  available then this sounds like a very good idea.
>
>
> Correct, TWW tools for win32 is not ready yet but this doesn't  
> prevent GNUstep
> (for Unix) to adopt the TWW tools.

No ... but there is little incentive for people to adopt it if it  
doesn't help packaging for our target systems.

> TWW tools(and all the software they packaged) are in GPL license so  
> if an OS is not
> supported, we can port the tools over.
>
> I tried to port the tools to Linksys nslu2, Mac OS X and win32 with  
> some progress
> but I reach my limit of ability and time.(Now you know I have these  
> three OS at home ;).
>
> for TWW and win32, here is my finding and testing
>
> sb(software build) tool was ported over quite easily using cygwin.

But we don't use/support cygwin for GNUstep on windows ... so, while  
some people may have cygwin installed, most won't ... so we would  
need the build tool ported to run without having to install cygwin too.

> pb(package build) tool need more thinking because there so many PMS
> solutions for win32. Personally I favor WiX becuase it use xml file  
> for describing
> package building and it is from vendor(MS). Using WiX will make pb  
> wrapper
> much easier, it will be just TWW's XML converted to WiX's XML format.
>
> currently gnustep win32 is not using WiX for packaging, I hope this  
> can be changed
> to use WiX. when TWW tools for win32 is ready, the conversion to  
> use TWW will
> be easier.

That sounds good.