Forgive me of saying this. I thought GNUstep died a year ago. But please, I hope there are more updates to this wonderful Objective-C piece of work.

WTF, some CEO found out they were using GNUStep and shut down! I'm not usually a conspiracy theorist, but this is awful strange.

I'd like to see gnustep get its own windowmanager (Window maker is crap unless you want to live like a NEXT desktop), and I'd like to see etoileMenuServer cleaned up and released. atm I keep getting strange crashes/positioning issues with the mac-like menubars whenever I use the menuserver with apps/compiz/metacity. I think they could get a mac-like desktop up and running really quickly, which I know isn't a primary goal of theirs, but I think it would attract more developers. An open mac environment built on the linux kernel is a pretty compelling environment to use versus a cross platform api that has to compete with QT/WX etc.

thanks for the heads up on gworkspace. For software development I've been using windowmaker for years. For my wife to be functional I've had to switch over most of my machines to xfce. Hopefully this is useable.

The idea most if not every part of an application wrapped up in a nice self contained .app directory structure is probably the most brilliant idea that the NeXT folks came up with.

The language and the API are far from dead. They are beating competition left an right, especially in the mobile segment.

"The idea most if not every part of an application wrapped up in a nice self contained .app directory structure is probably the most brilliant idea that the NeXT folks came up with.

An open mac environment built on the linux kernel is a pretty compelling environment to use versus a cross platform api that has to compete with QT/WX etc.

I don't think it matters when, or who invented it,

its simply a brilliant idea that Linux desperately could use.

Have you ever tried to install something that is not available in a package manager? Where to put it, find all the dependencies, create all the desktop file entries, etc...

If the app, config and icon is packaged up in a .app directory, it doesn't where it is, just run it. Done with it, just delete it. No freaking 1000 files sprayed out all over your system, everything in one place.

It would be really simple to add support like this to Nautilus and the KDE file manager. The layout of the .app is already supported by GWorkspace. This directory layout format should be handed over to the freedesktop folks to manage and publish.

Again, such a simple idea: package up the binaries, icons, config in a structured directory that the file manager knows how to run and display.

Again, it is completely language, desktop env, and even operating system independent.

Neither GNUstep nor Cocotron are complete, they each have different areas of functionality. GNUstep has a lot of UNimplemented API, especially newer ones. For example, Cocotron has a functional CoreData and CoreGraphics implementation, GNUstep has basically nothing for these.

Went back to look some more at the Snap site, and its been shut down!!!, just an single page with "SNAP development is currently on hold" WTF, some CEO found out they were using GNUStep and shut down! I'm not usually a conspiracy theorist, but this is awful strange.

As a starting point, Sony took the existing GNUstep libraries, which originated as an implementation of OpenStep, the basis for Apple's Cocoa in Mac OS X and iOS. GNUstep uses the same Objective-C language and implements similar (but not compatibly identical) development frameworks to the Cocoa used by developers to create Mac, iPhone and iPad apps.

However, after contributing a number of touch-based interface enhancements to the open GNUstep codebase, Sony has put its plans on hold without explaining why.