[OGo-GNUstep-Port] Re: gstep-make upgrade

[Helge Hess]

On Dienstag, 29. Juli 2003, at 10:48 Uhr, Nicola Pero wrote:
> gnustep-make has never been unstable (in recent times).

Never and recent really do not match very well ;-) And of course I'm 
talking about the last few years. Enterprise system maintainance for a 
source code is usually required for five years and *any* product 
maintainance is required by law for two years in Germany. That's the 
timescale I'm talking about. Eg the OGo database scheme never changed 
in an incompatible way in the last four years.

> I've personally used it (CVS version) continuously on commercial/live
> systems in the past years without problems.

We had that topic before in the GNUstep mailing list. A packaged 
application is very different to a project where the developers have 
everything under direct control. Then *you* understand gstep-make 100%, 
I think no one else does (and bothers).

> Helge is probably referring to the filesystem change which was 
> implemented
> a few months ago.  That's more of a 'backwards incompatible change
> requiring you to rebuild the whole system from scratch' rather than
> 'instability'.

I explicitly said that I don't mean instability with regards to the 
internal operation, but instability in the API. Which includes 
filesystem changes.
I've read that flattened is now default, another thing which requires 
to rework the packaging process and place some thinking into it.

Don't get me wrong, I don't necessarily think that the changes made are 
wrong in itself, it's just that _changes_ are only acceptable to a 
certain degree in OGo.
That's what I meant in my other mail with GNUstep vs OGo goals may be a 
bit too different to work on prestine sources. GNUstep needs to quickly 
evolve to get killer while OGo is stable.

> The switch is sort of incomplete at the moment, as there is going to be
> another related change in header location in the next weeks/months, 
> which
> should reduce a bit the command-line, and allow easier coexistence of
> different library-combos.

Given that, there is even less reason to make any change now. GNUstep 
is *not* ready for enduser systems. It's fine

> Updating to the new filesystem structure has been a bit painful on live
> systems because it required rebuilding everything.  A part from that, 
> it
> is a smooth transition.

This is not an "a part from that", it's a *HUGE* issue for a system 
like OGo. We are talking about end users here ;-)

regards,
   Helge
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