Re: gnustep-make experiment

[Nicola Pero]

> The only objection i've heard from gnustep.pc is "Its not the way 
> GNUstep stores information".

Here is a refresher --

 1. it adds an external dependency upon which *everything* would depend

 2. it is slower

 3. it is designed for something else (which adds complexity)

 4. it requires rewriting and redesigning stuff with no clear advantages


> The objection i have with GNUstep.conf is it isolates gnustep from the 
> rest of the world.

I find that objection vague.  Can you explain the practical meaning of
"it isolates gnustep from the rest of the world" ?

It's a text file in /etc/GNUstep.conf containing something like

GNUSTEP_SYSTEM_ROOT=/usr/GNUstep/System
GNUSTEP_LOCAL_ROOT=/usr/GNUstep/Local

It's not like we're designing a massive new language to use in the config file. 
 We
have a sequence of key=value lines in a plain text file.

Editing GNUstep.conf is something that should be very unusual, but if it 
happens,
it shouldn't be very difficult.  It's just a plain key=value text file!


> We cannot have a build system where information is only available to 
> GNUstep-make.

It makes sense ... so I added a script called gnustep-config.sh that is 
installed in
system Tools (hence always in PATH), that will print out the values of whatever
configuration variable you want ... eg,

address@hidden make]$ gnustep-config.sh GNUSTEP_MAKEFILES
/opt/gnustep-new/System/Library/Makefiles
address@hidden make]$ gnustep-config.sh GNUSTEP_IS_FLATTENED
yes
address@hidden make]$ gnustep-config.sh GNUSTEP_SYSTEM_ROOT
/opt/gnustep-new/System
address@hidden make]$ gnustep-config.sh GNUSTEP_USER_DEFAULTS_DIR
GNUstep/Defaults

Using that information, you can use whatever external tools you want to build 
or configure.

Thanks