Hi Quentin- Thanks for the detailed response. I appreciate all of the thoughts and insight.
I'll check out the scripts for the live cd. I've done scripting for custom installers before, so perhaps I'll be able to make some progress here. I'm currently working on setting up my Gentoo system, running OpenBox, for Etoile development. I look forward to getting more involved. Thanks again Ryan On Feb 11, 2011, at 4:34 PM, Quentin Mathé wrote: > Hi Ryan, > > Le 11 févr. 2011 à 15:28, Ryan Harter a écrit : > >> Hey Guys- >> >> I may not have been looking in the right places but I'm having some >> frustrations with Etoile development at the moment. I've spent the better >> part of the last week trying to get an Etoile dev environment set up and I >> keep hitting roadblocks. > > Yes, it is not easy to set up the environment the first time :-/ > >> For starters, I think having a Development VM on the site is an awesome >> idea. Nothing could lower the barrier to entry more than having everything >> you need to get started with development already there. The problem is that >> the image is a year and a half old. > > Would be nice to have the image updated indeed. The right solution would be > to have a set of scripts to generate it. I started to write such scripts to > generate a Ubuntu LiveCD a while ago. But I gave up because there was too > many things to do and the time was better spent elsewhere. > If you are interested to do something with that, I'd be glad to help. You can > take a look here http://svn.gna.org/viewcvs/etoile/trunk/Etoile/LiveCD/ > >> I know it would be impossible to create a new appliance with every new >> update, but I think a few documents right on the desktop (does Etoile's >> environment support desktop icons?) or in the home directory would be >> wonderful. > > As it stands now, Étoilé doesn't support desktop icons. > >> The first document that I would find helpful would be a "How do I get >> current" document. This should explain, hopefully with step by step >> instructions since the VM has a consistent platform, how to update GNUstep, >> update Etoile trunk, etc. as needed. > > We have this document: http://etoileos.com/downloads/installtrunk/ which is > the same than the INSTALL in the svn (see trunk/Etoile directory). This > document explanations should be valid to install on top of an existing > installation. > >> The second document that would help is a "How to get started with Etoile >> development" doc. This could answer some of my questions when I ran the dev >> VM like what IDE (if any, I'm fine with emacs) do you use? > > We use VIM, emacs or similar. In future, we plan to use CodeMonkey. > > Would be nice to have a document that explains the basic of gnustep-make I > agree. > >> Where do you get source to current projects? How can I install >> Etoile/GNUstep applications? > > See my previous reply about the INSTALL document. > >> The last document I think would be great would a "Finding help and moving >> forward" document. This could just be a list of all of the ways to get in >> touch and get involved with the Etoile community if you need support and to >> find out how to help. >> >> I'd be more than happy to help out by writing this documentation, but I need >> some help getting started, myself. > > ok :-) > >> What better way to get to know a project and get started than by getting >> everything set up and helping others do the same? I think I'll start with >> the dev VM since that will allow me to get to know the project without >> having to troubleshoot install issues for something I don't know much about. >> >> Could someone please give me some direction for how to get started with this >> information? I'm thinking mostly how to get the dev VM up to date. Is the >> GNUstep source on there and can I just do an 'svn up' and rebuild? Same for >> the etoile source. > > Well I have never tested this VM myself, so I'll let others comment about it… > >> Also, can you give me an idea of what development environment you guys use >> so I can write a "quick start guide"? Do you use Project Center? Gorm? > > Personally I use a normal Ubuntu with the GNOME session, because the > high-level parts (menu, theme etc.) of Étoilé are too broken currently. For > Étoilé development, I use gnustep-make, VIM, GDB and sometimes Gorm. For the > ObjC documentation, I read it on Apple website and on GNUstep website as a > second choice. > > For Étoile framework API documentation, we'll have our own real soon. I'm > currently working on that and this will be part of the 0.4.2 release. > >> And lastly, since the dev VM seems pretty bare from what I've seen, how does >> one go about installing other Etoile/GNUstep software? > > You can download or check out the code, then you do: make && sudo -E make > install > >> Is there a repo do list projects from? > > If you mean a TODO list, we have a Open Projects page on the website: > http://etoileos.com/dev/projects/ > >> A download site? > > For GNUstep, see http://www.gnustep.org/softwareindex/ and the wiki > announcements http://wiki.gnustep.org/index.php/Main_Page > For Étoilé, we have nothing like that, because we only have frameworks in a > usable state. > >> Again, I don't want to just be on the mailing list so I can complain about >> it being too hard. I will keep plugging away, but I think the project could >> benefit from some good getting started docs and I'd like to help out in that >> regard just as soon as I figure out how to get started. > > Having better docs would be great indeed. > We are well aware of the issue, we are working on some documentation aspects. > For instance, our goal is to release fully documented API, with quick start > guides and examples. > > However it's important to remember Étoilé is "not" a desktop environment > currently, it is more or less a development platform consisting of various > frameworks and in a quite experimental state. > > Cheers, > Quentin. > > > _______________________________________________ > Etoile-dev mailing list > [email protected] > https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/etoile-dev _______________________________________________ Etoile-dev mailing list [email protected] https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/etoile-dev
