Re: Changing gui->AppKit, base->Foundation... etc...

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 18 Nov 2010, at 20:24, Gregory Casamento wrote:

> Guys,
> 
> I would like to change the names of these things to things that both
> Cocoa and OpenStep developers are more familiar with.   It would be
> nice to have them as Foundation/AppKit and etc.   This would make it
> easier to talk about GNUstep with people without having to constantly
> say "base, GNUstep's version of Foundation" and the like.
> 
> I'm working on a patch to make this happen, but I would like to know
> if anyone has any misgivings about this before I commit it.

Well it rather depends on what you mean by changing the names.  I think it's 
fine to talk about GNUstep Foundation and GNUstep AppKit (probably we often do 
that already).

But -

On OSX Foundation and AppKit are frameworks ... so you link them in to your 
programs differently to the way you link the GNUstep libraries.  There seems 
nothing to be gained (and a lot of hassle to be produced for all existing 
software) by changing the library names.  However, it seems reasonable to add 
support for building/installing a Foundation framework and an AppKit framework 
(which would presumably encapsulate both gui and back).
I don't know how well gnustep-make supports frameworks though ...  are 
frameworks actually good enough on all platforms for us to want to tell people 
to use them in all new programs?