Re: Error building GNUstep

["J. Lewis Muir" <jlmuir%imca-cat.org@localhost>]

On 02/19, Luke Lollard wrote:
> I ended up getting it to build by running `chown -R root:wheel work/` in
> /usr/pkgsrc/devel/ProjectCenter/ (and ended up having the same issue
> with Renaissance next)

OK, that's strange.  That makes it sound like you ran bmake as root
because I don't know how else files in work could end up needing that
chown in order to build the package.  In general, it's not considered
safe to build as root.  Typically you build as a normal user and then
only become root for certain parts that require root privileges.  pkgsrc
has a so-called just-in-time-su feature for this, but there doesn't seem
to be a lot of documentation about it.

> > Does the following tmp file exist, which is what it's trying to move?
> >
> >   /usr/pkgsrc/devel/ProjectCenter/work/.packages/ProjectCenter-0.6.2nb24.tmp.tgz
> 
> That file did not exist. I'm confused as to why the gid of 125 caused
> this issue (if it was indeed that). If I look at
> /usr/pkgsrc/mail/GNUMail/work, those files were owned by group 125 as
> well, but they built just fine.

There could be a number of explanations, but I think you'd have to share
a lot more details in order to say.  Details like exactly how the pkgsrc
source tree was installed, how it was bootstrapped, how and by which
user you're running bmake, what were the permissions on the files, etc.
Unfortunately, I don't have time to help much with that, so if you were
going to try to track that down, additional help would probably have to
come from someone else.

> > But then again, I'm just guessing that you're on x86_64; are you?
> 
> Yes, I am. I wanted to try compiling from source because eventually I'd
> like to help out with software distribution.
> 
> Anyway, I got to the point that I could launch WindowMaker and play
> around. However, the GNUstep apps won't open. These are the errors
> I'm getting:
> 
> $ openapp ./ProjectCenter.app/
> 2025-02-19 15:49:59.252 ProjectCenter[6692:139757518391048] Did not find correct version of backend (libgnustep-back-030.bundle), falling back to std (libgnustep-back.bundle).
> 2025-02-19 15:49:59.254 ProjectCenter[6692:139757518391048] NSApplication.m:304  Assertion failed in BOOL initialize_gnustep_backend(void).  Unable to find backend back
> [1]   Segmentation fault      openapp ./ProjectCenter.app/
> 
> $ openapp ./GWorkspace.app/
> Version 2 Objective-C ABI may not be mixed with earlier versions.
> [1]   Abort trap              openapp ./GWorkspace.app/
> 
> So now I'm stuck again.

You could get a backtrace to see if it reveals what went wrong.  But
basically, I don't know much about GNUstep nor Objective-C.

> pkgsrc and the pkgin binaries have out of date
> versions of GNUstep software. I guess it's time to look into how to
> solve that next.

That would be a possible route.  FYI, there's the pkgsrc-wip project

  https://pkgsrc.org/wip/

which could be a good approach for that.  You could stage your changes
to update GNUstep packages there, and that would probably make it easier
for pkgsrc developers to help, review your changes, and possibly import
them to pkgsrc if you get to the point of wishing for your changes to be
imported into pkgsrc.

Lewis