Bug#922284: wmaker-common: Should not set GNUSTEP_USER_ROOT; unable to build GNUstep software

[Torrance, Douglas]

Control: forwarded -1 wmaker-dev at googlegroups.com

We received the following bug report in Debian:

On 2/14/19 2:24 AM, Yavor Doganov wrote:
> Package: wmaker-common
> Version: 0.95.8-3
> Severity: important
> File: /usr/bin/wmaker
> Control: affects -1 gnustep
> 
> As evident from the prefix, GNUSTEP_USER_ROOT is a GNUstep variable and
> Window Maker should not set it.  Furthemore, it has been deprecated for
> 12 years already.  As of gnustep-make/2.7.0-4 the GNUstep build system
> is configured in strict v2 mode which makes it impossible to compile
> GNUstep software.  In a terminal started from a Window Maker session:
> 
> yavor at aneto:/tmp/gorm.app-1.2.24$ make
> This is gnustep-make 2.7.0. Type 'make print-gnustep-make-help' for help.
> Running in gnustep-make version 2 strict mode.
> rm -f InterfaceBuilder; \
> ln -s GormLib InterfaceBuilder
> /usr/share/GNUstep/Makefiles/config-noarch.make:121: *** GNUSTEP_USER_ROOT is obsolete.  Stop.
> 
> It is also impossible to build gnustep-make from pristine upstream
> source:
> 
> yavor at aneto:/tmp$ wget -q ftp://ftp.gnustep.org/pub/gnustep/core/gnustep-make-2.7.0.tar.gz
> yavor at aneto:/tmp$ tar xzf gnustep-make-2.7.0.tar.gz
> yavor at aneto:/tmp$ cd gnustep-make-2.7.0/
> yavor at aneto:/tmp/gnustep-make-2.7.0$ ./configure
> ...
> yavor at aneto:/tmp/gnustep-make-2.7.0$ make
> config-noarch.make:121: *** GNUSTEP_USER_ROOT is obsolete.  Stop.
> 
> Note that the majority of GNUstep users use Window Maker as their window
> manager and many of them build GNUstep software from source, mostly
> because of the GNUstep Objective-C runtime which depends on Clang
> (Debian packages use GCC and the GCC/GNU runtime).
> 
> -- System Information:
> Debian Release: buster/sid
>    APT prefers unstable-debug
>    APT policy: (500, 'unstable-debug'), (500, 'testing-debug'), (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing')
> Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
> Foreign Architectures: i386, x32
> 
> Kernel: Linux 4.19.0-3-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
> Locale: LANG=bg_BG.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=bg_BG.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=bg_BG.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
> Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
> Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
> LSM: AppArmor: enabled
> 
> wmaker-common depends on no packages.
> 
> wmaker-common recommends no packages.
> 
> Versions of packages wmaker-common suggests:
> ii  wmaker  0.95.8-3
> 
> -- no debconf information

We're currently using GNUSTEP_USER_ROOT so WINGs can find the user's 
configuration files.  It seems like a straightforward fix would be to 
just replace this variable with our own, say WMAKER_USER_ROOT.

Does this seem like a good idea?  If so, I can prepare a patch.

Thanks!
Doug