G'day Greg, Thanks for letting me know. Actually, I happened to already write such a thing (though unpublished), so perhaps should have asked first. I'll publish it anyway. It will be at https://github.com/thoran/gorm2xib. It might take a few days though and it still needs a bit of a workout. By virtue of your email, I downloaded the apps-gorm repo and found the readme for gormtool, but it wasn't clear from that which switches and values I should use. Perhaps I can compare outputs? Some context would help also... I wanted to compile SimpleAgenda.app for macOS as part of a possible personal migration (or the ability to switch back and forth), as per previously mentioned. (I'm also tinkering with building a distributed database which can use adapters to facilitate ease of migration/synchronisation between different systems.) However, because running SimpleAgenda.app as a GNUstep app on top of macOS seemed to be harder to achieve, I decided to attempt a native build. In the course of mucking about with all of this and writing gorm2xib, I think I cracked getting a solid build of GNUstep on macOS, so that apps can be built either as native macOS or as GNUstep on macOS. Was getting GNUstep to build reliably on macOS a pain point, or is it evident I don't know what I'm doing? The reason I went down this path is because macOS is becoming increasingly locked up/down. Earlier this year I was in the process of writing a script to set up a fresh install of macOS so that everything is installed and configured as I like it, using lots of 3rd party and custom stuff. I found that automatically configuring Mail.app and Calendar.app were no longer possible. Whereas previously it was possible to simply write some .plist values, then later use profile -I to import a profile, that switch was removed a couple of years ago, with the only remaining option to have a corporate account to distribute that profile data from Apple's servers, I decided to that it wasn't worth setting one up (nor would I want to) for just one account. I even went to the extent of writing a .mobileconfig (XML) generator class and then attempting to use AppleScript to automate loading that via System Settings. It all looked good until it became apparent that the requisite preference pane (Are they still called that?) is not AppleScript-enabled. Developers and going through all kinds of a contortions to work around this limitation over the last 2 years, including writing in Obj-C inside their other code a web server as another way of serving up .mobileconfig files. Apple's 'jumped the shark' for me on this; that I can no longer automate administration of my machine. Time to move on soon and is possibly an opportune time for more proselytising? Cheers,
thoran On Jul 31 2025, at 9:29 am, Gregory Casamento <[email protected]> wrote: > Your rationale is actually the precise reason I did it... it makes it a lot > easier to port apps back and forth. > > > On Wed, Jul 30, 2025 at 11:56 AM thoran <[email protected] > (mailto:[email protected])> wrote: > > Hello, > > > > If I wrote such a thing, then am I re-inventing any wheels, or does it > > fulfil an as yet unmet need? > > My thinking is that a migration path to GNUstep from macOS is smoothed if > > one can more easily port and more readily use GNUstep apps natively on > > macOS. Thoughts? > > Cheers, > > > > thoran > > > -- > Gregory Casamento > GNUstep Lead Developer / Black Lotus, Principal Consultant > http://www.gnustep.org - http://heronsperch.blogspot.com > https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=352392 - Become a Patron > > > https://www.openhub.net/languages/objective_c > > https://www.gofundme.com/f/cacao-linux-a-gnustep-reference-implementation > > > >
