Re: gnustep-make experiment

[Nicola Pero]

>> If we had gnustep-make depend on pkg-config, then you wouldn't be  
>> able to use GNUstep unless you installed pkg-config first.
>
> That's not entirely correct. GNUstep can be taught how to read  
> pkgconfig-format-file, such as GNUstep.pc, thus eliminating the need  
> for GNUstep.conf entirely,

We designed the GNUstep.conf syntax so that it can be very efficiently read
from makefiles, shells, and C/ObjC code.

The 'pkg-config' meta-file format can not be read easily from makefiles without
firing off a subprocess.  We'd then need to fire off an additional subprocess
for each invocation of make, which, performance-wise, is bad.

Thanks


PS: I must be missing your point completely because I don't really understand 
what you're
trying to say.  Technically, you're suggesting we depend on the gnome/gtk config
tools (which were not designed for us, so the integration would be massively 
painful)
just for the sake of "being more similar to gnome/gtk".

But I suspect what you'd really want to discuss is how to compile things without
using gnustep-make.  Which is a perfectly valid discussion, and in that context
pkg-config might make sense.  If you want to build using the 
autoconf/automake/pkg-config 
toolchain, then using pkg-config is an interesting option.

Still, such an option shouldn't prevent the standard users from using the 
standard
GNUstep fast/easy building system if they want, and shouldn't interfere with 
our internal
implementation.

The most obvious option is provide a gnustep-config tool that will output the 
gcc flags
for the various stages/types of compilation, and provide some basic indication 
of where
to install things, then you could at least compile and install tools and 
libraries without gnustep-make.  We could make it reasonably similar to the 
traditional xxx-config gnome/gtk
tools if you think that would make it easier to use.  We can think about that.