[Debian GNUstep maintainers] Next GNUstep problem BioCocoa.app (Was: RFS: adun.app (updated package))

[Yavor Doganov]

[ CCing the GNUstep list as I know very little about porting issues
and this app specifically. ]

Andreas Tille wrote:
> 
> May be we now have another target: BioCocoa.app
> 
> > Please go ahead, and if you have any kind of GNUstep-related problems
> > -- do not hesitate to contact the GNUstep team.
> 
> The situation is as follows:
> 
>    - QA maintained, but Debian Med Packagin team should take over
>    - Upstream seems to have switched to Mac only.  Correct me if
>      I'm missreading
> 
>         http://www.bioinformatics.org/biococoa/

It seems so, unfortunately.  Yikes.  Maybe if you ask they may provide
GNUstep tarballs too.  As it stands now, it would be a lot of work for
you.

>    - Latest Upstream version is 1.7 which is slightly higher than Debian
>      packaged version, but a password seems to be required for
>      download.  I woual ask for a passwordm, but would like to see
>      whether it makes sense spending time on this issue

This works for me:

svn co svn://bioinformatics.org/svnroot/BioCocoa

The .dmg they provide as "Download" is useless. 

If you plan to generate a tarball yourself, you must write a
GNUmakefile (and maintain it yourself if upstream doesn't plan to
support GNUstep).  Of course this is a prerequisite to build the app.
That's the easy part, even if you have to go with several makefiles.

Also, probably you'll have to convert the .nib files to .gorm (with
gorm.app); maintaining them is a huge pain from Debian's point of view
since they're binary.

If upstream didn't resist the temptation to use classes that are not
available on GNUstep, you'll have to port the app by rewriting those
parts (sometimes this is not trivial at all).  

I don't see BioCocoa at wiki.gnustep.org under "Applications", which
is also a disturbing indication.

Probably all of this will be solved by upstream, if you ask.  Or not.

>    - After installing and running the package

I assume you mean the current package in the Debian archive?  Neither
1.7 nor 2.0 from upstream's repository are buildable.

>      I get some icon in the
>      bottom left corner of my screen showing some kind of notepad.
>      After some seconds this icon vanishes and I get "Aborted" in
>      the starting xterm

Yes, I can reproduce this.

> The latest issue is the most burning one.  

Judging by the backtrace, it is the same bug in gnustep-base that you
encountered with adun.app; it got nailed by upstream recently but
still present in Debian.

> Any hint how I should run this programm to get at least some

Like before, the crude workaround is:

1. killall -9 gdnc
2. rm -rf /tmp/GNUstepSecure*

> impression whether it is worth spending some time into it?

IMVHO if upstream doesn't support GNUstep, it's not worth it.
Although 2.0 seems to be a complete rewrite, so it might be something
interesting.  But not at the cost of doing all the porting work, I
think.