[Debian GNUstep maintainers] Window Maker and GNUstep directory

[Yavor Doganov]

On Mon, 15 Jan 2018 15:42:26 +0200,
Doug Torrance wrote:
> Currently, the Debian Window Maker package installs WPrefs.app, its
> GUI configuration tool, in
> /usr/share/lib/GNUstep/System/Applications/WPrefs.app.  This directory
> includes both the binary itself and various arch-independent image
> files.

The binary is at /usr/lib/GNUstep/System/Applications/WPrefs.app
AFAICS.

> This seems completely incorrect -- both because of the
> "/usr/share/lib" combination and also because I can find no other
> packages in Debian which install anything to */GNUstep/System/*.

Right.  GNUstep/System was the old location (> 10 years ago); it
changed with gnustep-make/2.x.  The share/lib thing is probably a bug
introduced when the wmaker package maintainers moved the arch-indep
files from /usr/lib/ to /usr/share for FHS compliance.  IIRC, at some
point WPrefs was also installed at /usr/lib/GNUstep/Apps (also wrong
and non-standard as far as GNUstep is concerned).

> * Is it even appropriate for WPrefs.app to be installed in the GNUstep
> directory in the first place, as it's not really a GNUstep
> application?  (It's written using the WINGs library, which literally
> stands for "WINGs Is Not GNUstep.")

I don't think it's correct but it doesn't do any harm either.  I guess
the idea was to expose WPrefs in the standard GNUstep Applications
folder as it is expected to be used often (Window Maker was and still
is the most widely window manager by GNUstep users).

You can see how this folder looks like if you install gworkspace.app.
WPrefs would need a .plist file to get its icon displayed properly.
Also, there is a gworkspace-apps-wrappers package which installs
wrappers for several non-GNUstep applications.  Some GNUstep users
create and install such wrappers manually; it is not unusual to have a
non-GNUstep program wrapped in an app bundle for convenience.

> * If it is appropriate to install WPrefs.app into the GNUstep
> directory, then what would be the most appropriate path?  Based on
> other GNUstep packages, it seems like perhaps
>     /usr/lib/GNUstep/Applications/WPrefs.app
> for arch-dependent files and
>     /usr/share/GNUstep/WPrefs.app
> for arch-independent ones.  Is this correct?

Correct, with /usr/lib/GNUstep/Applications/WPrefs.app/Resources being
a symlink pointing to /usr/share/GNUstep/WPrefs.app.  You basically
don't need to do the symlink dance since WPrefs can access its
arch-indep files already.  However, you would still need a Resources
directory containing the .plist file if you want the icon displayed.