Platform compatibility

Note: Anyone know how to convert Platform Compatibility HowTOsource into wiki language, so we can work on others' effort?

Following are procedures for installing GNUstep on different Operating Systems.

BSD

FreeBSD

You can install GNUstep via /usr/ports/devel/gnustep. However, not all required dependancies are installed.

If you install the following in advance, you should be fine:

• wmaker
• libxml2
• libxslt
• libgmp4
• libart_lgpl2
• libaudiofile
• ffcall
• glitz

You may also want to install /usr/ports/net/mDNSResponder.

Note: There is a bug in libkvm that requires a mounted /proc. Until this bug is fixed, make sure you have an entry for /proc in your /etc/fstab:

 proc                    /proc           procfs  rw              0       0

References: FreeBSD GNUstep ports, Freshports GNUstep

NetBSD

Building GNUstep from source is fairly straight-forward for NetBSD 1.6 and 2.0: it is suggested however to upgrade to 2.0 if possible. NetBSD/i386 has no known problems right now, however there are reports of crashout problems for gdomap on NetBSD/sparc which may be related to ffi/ffcall issues.

In general, it's easier to install dependency packages from pkgsrc rather than downloading the sources and tweaking them to build and install.

Prerequisites

It is assumed that you've got a basic X-windows configuration sorted out if you are intending to use the GNUstep GUI. Right now the WindowMaker window manager is recommended.

To get the dependency packages installed, cd to your pkgsrc tree and cd to the right package directories, on my system:

 cd /usr/pkgsrc

then go to the package you wish to install, for example:

 cd devel/gmake

and issue the command:

 make install

This command will download source code and even dependencies on dependencies and compile and install them. Move back to the pkgsrc directory and do this again until all the packages are installed.

The dependency packages are:

• devel/gmake
• wm/windowmaker
• graphics/jpeg
• graphics/png
• graphics/tiff
• devel/ffcall OR devel/libffi
• textproc/libxml2
• devel/pth (only for NetBSD 1.6)

Build instructions

To be provided.

Linux

Debian

Since Debian "Sarge" you can just say

apt-get install x-window-system-core wmaker gnustep gnustep-devel gnustep-games

to get GNUstep, X11 and Window Maker installed.

But what happen if you are on Debian stable (3.0) release ?

Here is an answer from gnustep irc channel:

 <fsmunoz> change every occurence of "stable" for "testing"
 <fsmunoz> remove the security.debian.org line
 <fsmunoz> do apt-get update
 <fsmunoz> apt-get dist-upgrade
 <fsmunoz> repeat  this last one until nothing gets installed or removed.
 <fsmunoz> the, replace "testing" with "unstable"
 <fsmunoz> then, apt-get update
 <fsmunoz> apt-get dist-upgrade
 <fsmunoz> repeat, repeat.
 <fsmunoz> done

The above was a general guide to upgrade from Debian stable to unstable, not exactly the best way to install GNUstep packages. If one doesn't want to upgrade it is possible to simply add the unstable apt lines to the sources.list and specify the distribution when installing the packages, e.g.

# apt-get install -t unstable gnumail.app

This will probably upgrade some other packages to satisfy dependencies, but will have a much small impact on the system since only the packages on which GNUstep depends will be upgraded.

Yet another way is to add tarzeau's repository; he packages a huge ammount of GNUstep packages. Just add this to your sources.list:

deb http://www.linuks.mine.nu/i_debian/ ./   
deb-src http://www.linuks.mine.nu/i_debian/ ./

This repository contains packages made in unstable, so it's possible that the dependencies only are satisfied in unstable systems.

Solaris

http://www.linuks.mine.nu/gnustep/solaris is one package sources to create solaris packages for GNUstep.

Windows

SFU

Microsfot's Service For Unix.

Others

LiveCD for Intel

Current version is 0.9.4.2

Find the instructions to install and the CD itself here

Linksys NSLU2

• First thing need to happen is to gnerate a gcc cross compiler with objc enabled.

Current nslu2 supported gcc only has c and c++ enabled when building the crosstool-native package.

• check out unslung source using follow command.

cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/nslu co unslung

• add in objc as language need to be enabled.

perl -pi -e 's!^GCC_LANGUAGES=.*!GCC_LANGUAGES="c,c++,objc"!' toolchain/crosstool/nslu2-cross335.sh

perl -pi -e 's!^GCC_LANGUAGES=.*!GCC_LANGUAGES="c,c++,objc"!' sources/crosstool-native/nslu2-native335.sh

• • Compile cross-compiler for arm cpu using gcc compiler on debian 3.1 linux.

tjyang@debian:~/unslung$ pwd
/home/tjyang/unslung
tjyang@debian:~/unslung$ rm toolchain/crosstool/.configured
tjyang@debian:~/unslung$ rm toolchain/crosstool/.built
tjyang@debian:~/unslung$ unset LD_LIBRARY_PATH
tjyang@debian:~/unslung$make toolchain

• A arm gcc with objective-C enabled.

/export/home/tjyang/slug/unslung/toolchain/armv5b-softfloat-linux/gcc-3.3.5-glibc-2.2.5/bin/armv5b-softfloat-linux-gcc -v

Reading specs from /export/home/tjyang/slug/unslung/toolchain/armv5b-softfloat-linux/gcc-3.3.5-glibc-2.2.5/lib/gcc-lib/armv5b-softfloat-linux/3.3.5/specs
Configured with: /export/home/tjyang/slug/unslung/toolchain/crosstool/build/armv5b-softfloat-linux/gcc-3.3.5-glibc-2.2.5/gcc-3.3.5/configure --target=armv5b-softfloat-linux --host=i686-host_pc-linux-gnu --prefix=/export/home/tjyang/slug/unslung/toolchain/armv5b-softfloat-linux/gcc-3.3.5-glibc-2.2.5 --with-float=soft --with-cpu=xscale --enable-cxx-flags=-mcpu=xscale --with-headers=/export/home/tjyang/slug/unslung/toolchain/armv5b-softfloat-linux/gcc-3.3.5-glibc-2.2.5/armv5b-softfloat-linux/include --with-local-prefix=/export/home/tjyang/slug/unslung/toolchain/armv5b-softfloat-linux/gcc-3.3.5-glibc-2.2.5/armv5b-softfloat-linux --disable-nls --enable-threads=posix --enable-symvers=gnu --enable-__cxa_atexit --enable-languages=c,c++,objc --enable-shared --enable-c99 --enable-long-long
Thread model: posix
gcc version 3.3.5
[tjyang@dual unslung]$
   

• • A simple test of objc on host linux machine.

[tjyang@dual bin]$ pwd
/home/tjyang/slug/unslung/toolchain/armv5b-softfloat-linux/gcc-3.3.5-glibc-2.2.5/armv5b-softfloat-linux/bin
[tjyang@dual bin]$
[tjyang@dual bin]$ cat helloworld.m
#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
   printf("Hello World\n");
}
[tjyang@dual bin]$ ./gcc helloworld.m -lobjc -o helloworld
[tjyang@dual bin]$ file helloworld
hellow: ELF 32-bit MSB executable, ARM, version 1 (ARM), for GNU/Linux 2.4.3, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), not stripped
[tjyang@dual bin]$ uname -a
Linux dual 2.4.21-9.ELsmp #1 SMP Thu Jan 8 17:08:56 EST 2004 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
[tjyang@dual bin]$

• • Second step is to use this cross-compiler which generate binaries code for armb cpu to compile a native compiler. This complier can only be run on native machine nslu2 not on Intel linux.

[tjyang@dual unslung]$ make crosstool-native;make crosstool-native-ipk
[tjyang@dual unslung]$ ls -lrt builds/*.ipk
-rw-rw-r--    1 tjyang   tjyang    5569523 Feb 17 13:32 builds/crosstool-native-bin_0.28-rc37-3_armeb.ipk
-rw-rw-r--    1 tjyang   tjyang   12677163 Feb 17 13:33 builds/crosstool-native-lib_0.28-rc37-3_armeb.ipk
-rw-rw-r--    1 tjyang   tjyang    1722660 Feb 17 13:33 builds/crosstool-native-inc_0.28-rc37-3_armeb.ipk
-rw-rw-r--    1 tjyang   tjyang    7049858 Feb 17 13:34 builds/crosstool-native-arch-bin_0.28-rc37-3_armeb.ipk
-rw-rw-r--    1 tjyang   tjyang    9032668 Feb 17 13:34 builds/crosstool-native-arch-lib_0.28-rc37-3_armeb.ipk
-rw-rw-r--    1 tjyang   tjyang    7483945 Feb 17 13:35 builds/crosstool-native-arch-inc_0.28-rc37-3_armeb.ipk
-rw-rw-r--    1 tjyang   tjyang       1058 Feb 17 13:35 builds/crosstool-native_0.28-rc37-3_armeb.ipk

[tjyang@dual unslung]$ cp  /export/home/tjyang/slug/unslung/builds/*.ipk  /disk76/nslu2/tmp/
[tjyang@dual unslung]$

login into your nslu2, cd to where the ipk packages are.
run following commands.
bash-2.05b# for i in *.ipk
> do
> ipkg -force-overwrite install $i
> done
Upgrading crosstool-native-arch-bin on root from 0.28-rc37-3 to 0.28-rc37-5...
Configuring crosstool-native-arch-bin
Upgrading crosstool-native-arch-inc on root from 0.28-rc37-3 to 0.28-rc37-5...
Configuring crosstool-native-arch-inc
Upgrading crosstool-native-arch-lib on root from 0.28-rc37-3 to 0.28-rc37-5...
Configuring crosstool-native-arch-lib
Upgrading crosstool-native-bin on root from 0.28-rc37-3 to 0.28-rc37-5...
Configuring crosstool-native-bin
Upgrading crosstool-native-inc on root from 0.28-rc37-3 to 0.28-rc37-5...
Configuring crosstool-native-inc
Upgrading crosstool-native-lib on root from 0.28-rc37-3 to 0.28-rc37-5...
Configuring crosstool-native-lib
Upgrading crosstool-native on root from 0.28-rc37-3 to 0.28-rc37-5...
Configuring crosstool-native
bash-2.05b# date
Sat Feb 19 01:04:07 CST 2005
bash-2.05b#

• • try to compile helloworld.m objective-C file and run the helloworld binary on nslu2.

bash-2.05b# gcc helloworld.m -lobjc -o helloworld
bash-2.05b# file helloworld
helloworld: ELF 32-bit MSB executable, ARM, version 1 (ARM), for GNU/Linux 2.4.3, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), not stripped
bash-2.05b# ./helloworld
./helloworld: error while loading shared libraries: libobjc.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
bash-2.05b#

libobjc.so.1 is in /opt/armeb/armv5b-softfloat-linux/lib, this path need to be in LD_LIBRARY_PATH.


bash-2.05b# ./helloworld
Hello World
bash-2.05b# uname -a
Linux LKG7BFA96 2.4.22-xfs #1 Sat Jan 1 21:34:54 HST 2005 armv5b unknown unknown GNU/Linux
bash-2.05b# date
Thu Feb 17 11:35:19 CST 2005
bash-2.05b# cat compile.sh
/opt/armeb/armv5b-softfloat-linux/bin/gcc  helloworld.m -o helloworld -lobjc
bash-2.05b# cat /etc/profile
PATH=/opt/bin:/share/hdd/data/public/nslu2/tjyang/unslung/staging/bin:${PATH}
TERM=xterm
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/lib:/lib:/opt/armeb/armv5b-softfloat-linux/lib
export PATH TERM
bash-2.05b#

• • Of course more strong testing is needed. please add instructon below if you know how to run objective-c's testsuite in crosstool.

• Using Objective-C enalbed gcc to compile gnustep-core,gnustep-* software.

References: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/discuss-gnustep/2005-02/msg00124.html