Re: GWorkspace questions

[Chris B. Vetter]

On 2/6/07, Thomas Roberts <address@hidden> wrote:
> I am new to FreeBSD and GNUstep so I am a little
> confused as to how to install GWorkspace.  GWorkspace
> and SystemPreferences are in my ports collection, but
> I was not able to find the PDFKit framework.  Is it in
> the ports collection under a different name or do I
> need to pkg_add it?

As far as I remember, you do not *need* the PDFKit for GWorkspace to
run properly.

> Can I use the ports collection to
> install GWorkspace and SystemPreferences or should I
> download the sources and compile them?

That's for you to decide. You can use the ports, if you want.

The advantage would be that you do not have to worry (much) about
missing dependencies, as the ports system will sort  these out for
you.

The disadvantage would be that you will get only official releases,
which obviously will lack the up-to-date features. Then again,
releases usually are stable....

Another disadvantage I noticed is that the GNUstep ports do not always
register dependencies properly. If you use portupgrade(1) and try to
update x11/gnustep-apps/ or x11/etoile/ it occasionally will fail.

Last, if you update one of the GNUstep core ports (make, base, gui,
backend) you need to re-install applications by hand. portupgrade(1)
will not do it for you. This could be remedied by bumping up the
versions of all GNUstep related ports, though.

> What directory
> do I download them to if I can't use the ports
> collection?

Doesn't matter as long as there is enough disk space left.

Though I'm running FreeBSD on several machines, I only use GNUstep
from ports on one of them. On all others, I use GNUstep from SVN and
store the sources in my user's home.

> I am using portmanager to install
> packages, if that makes a difference.  The
> documentation says beefore I compile GWorkspace I need
> PDFKit and SystemPreferences but it doesn't say if
> they need to be installed in a particular order.

If you go and install the GWorkspace port, it should install
dependencies beforehand, so you do not have to worry about that too
much.

--
Chris