[Debian GNUstep maintainers] Next GNUstep problem BioCocoa.app (Was: RFS: adun.app (updated package))

[Andreas Tille]

On Tue, 11 Mar 2008, Yavor Doganov wrote:

> It seems so, unfortunately.  Yikes.  Maybe if you ask they may provide
> GNUstep tarballs too.  As it stands now, it would be a lot of work for
> you.

And it is even some work I have no idea about. :-(

> This works for me:
>
> svn co svn://bioinformatics.org/svnroot/BioCocoa
>
> The .dmg they provide as "Download" is useless.
>
> If you plan to generate a tarball yourself, you must write a
> GNUmakefile (and maintain it yourself if upstream doesn't plan to
> support GNUstep).  Of course this is a prerequisite to build the app.
> That's the easy part, even if you have to go with several makefiles.
>
> Also, probably you'll have to convert the .nib files to .gorm (with
> gorm.app); maintaining them is a huge pain from Debian's point of view
> since they're binary.
>
> If upstream didn't resist the temptation to use classes that are not
> available on GNUstep, you'll have to port the app by rewriting those
> parts (sometimes this is not trivial at all).

Yes.  I guessed that all this stuff is not trivial because I do not
even understand the stuff you wrote above.  All these extensions are
completely unknown to me and I do not have the slightest idea how to
proceed.

> I don't see BioCocoa at wiki.gnustep.org under "Applications", which
> is also a disturbing indication.

I have no idea how up to date this page is.  Sometimes such lists
might miss an entry because it is just forgotten, but the overall
image does not indicate such a case.

> Probably all of this will be solved by upstream, if you ask.  Or not.

Well, I personally will spent my time with problems I see chances
to be able to add real value.  Guessing from my poor knowledge of the
issues above I see no chance to do so in this case.  So if somebody else
would like to bother upstream - just go for it.

>>    - After installing and running the package
>
> I assume you mean the current package in the Debian archive?

Yep.

> Neither 1.7 nor 2.0 from upstream's repository are buildable.

Ahh, you mean also 1.7 is not buildable?  I had hoped we would
get a fix for 1.6 from upstreams 1.7 ...

> Judging by the backtrace, it is the same bug in gnustep-base that you
> encountered with adun.app; it got nailed by upstream recently but
> still present in Debian.

Ahh, OK, so it was reasonable to ask first before filing a bug against
biococoa.app immediately.  Would you mind sending a qualified bug
report against the relevant package to keep a record of this problem.

>> Any hint how I should run this programm to get at least some
>
> Like before, the crude workaround is:
>
> 1. killall -9 gdnc
> 2. rm -rf /tmp/GNUstepSecure*

A , it works on my other box perfectly and by chance I had rebooted
the box where the app was broken it runs now as well.

>> impression whether it is worth spending some time into it?
>
> IMVHO if upstream doesn't support GNUstep, it's not worth it.
> Although 2.0 seems to be a complete rewrite, so it might be something
> interesting.  But not at the cost of doing all the porting work, I
> think.

OK.  So I would decide to provide a stable maintained version 1.6
inside Debian, see how hardly users want this and bother upstream
in case there is a real need for it.  What do you think?

Kind regards

         Andreas.

-- 
http://fam-tille.de