GNUstep and HPMS HowTO

Overview

Have you ever take a look of current computing environments on Earth from outerspace ? Seeing so many Operating Systems got created in the name of inovation(it is true in most cases). End users end up with lots of incompatible operating systems,programming languages and applications to deal with. Each OS vendor/supporter will make their OS as different as possible and label it as features. In some cases, they will spend exra efforts to make sure other OS users can't use their features. All of these actions create high maintence cost. We need a solution to deal with these diversions to avoid the chaos.

The Java environment is a good example aim to do same "things" across different incompatible paltforms. GNUstep is another example aim to provide unified and consistent programming environment for software devlopers.

A solution to deal with application managment across different OS is needed. Given GNUstep's cross-platform declaration on application development activities, so should the application mangement activies cross-platform united.

In this article we like to use GNUstep application as an example to demostrate the benifits of using CPAM.

GNUstep installation process should be and could be as simple as "pkg-inst GNUstep-1.0" across GNUstep supported OS plaforms. But in oder to get there, following need to be done.

What is CPAM ?

This is a project to automate the process of creating GNUstep environment for a perticular OS platform. 

Why doing it

• • Lots of time is spent by experienced GNUsteppers to assist new GNUsteppers with compiling the source, and this waste will continue to occur unless we resolve certain issues.
  • Time can be better spent on GNUstep developement, and not on the compling and packaging process.
  • Easy installation and removal of GNUstep encourges the deployment of GNUstep in corporate environments.
  • The softare adn pacakge creation processes can be reproduced easliy by others with simple commands.
  • Improves QA testing by generating GNUstep bug fixed instances quickly.

Plan

• Introduce CPAM(Cross-Platform Application Management) tool implemented by TWW Inc. to GNUstep CPAD community
  • Cross-Platform is easier said then done becuase each platform's features are barriers for others.

• Release GNUstep package source implemented by TWW CPAM.
  • I will release a working package source for others to try and review.
  • The package soruces can generate native package format for RHAS rpm,Solaris pkgadd and HP-UX depot formats.

• Write tutorial on learning TWW CPAM.
  • I am willing to help/assist a few persons to get familliar with TWW tools if they promise to write up what they learned in a tutorial article. As you can see I am really not good on documenation work.

Notes from TJ Yang

 In this paragrah, I just want to make sure above out of nowhere text not treated as spam.
 My name is T.J. Yang(tj_yang at hotmail dot com), 
 I have been working as a system administator and I am interested 
 to bring the CPAM experience to work on this project. I promised myslef to digitalize the 
 compiling process when "Adam Fedor" was kindly answer my emails regarding to the compiling issues
 I econcuntered.

 Please email me if you have comment/questions. 
 For detail about TWW, please see http://www.thewrittenword.com.
 I have used CPAM tool at work to bring cross-platform open-source software support 
 nightmare under control. TWW CPAM tool is battle field tested ;)

 All the TWW tools and sources of their supported packages are GPL open-source compliant. 
 They are freely avaiable(ftp://support.thewrittenword.com) but support labor and binary packages are not.