Window Maker and GNUstep directory

[Doug Torrance]

On 01/20/2018 04:20 AM, Yavor Doganov wrote:
> 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.

Yeah, you're right.  However, Window Maker's default menus *think* it's 
in /usr/share/lib/GNUstep, and this is where the arch-independent files 
are currently installed.  An Ubuntu bug reporting this [1] caused me to 
start looking into this mess in the first place.  :)

>> 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.

Wonderful, thank you so much for the information!  I'll likely put a 
band-aid on the problem in Debian at the moment and try to fix things 
upstream for the next release.

[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/wmaker/+bug/1742842