GNUSTEP Projects and Applications

It is entirely possible to create a project manually using a text editor by creating a .m file to contain the Objective-C code and creating a GNUMakefile containing something like the following:
include $(GNUSTEP_MAKEFILES)/common.make
TOOL_NAME = LogTest
LogTest_OBJC_FILES = source.m
include $(GNUSTEP_MAKEFILES)/tool.make

The above is also from the GNUstep manual.

It is also possible to create an application in Gorm (the GNUstep interface builder) without using ProjectCenter.

However, the normal way to create a project would be with ProjectCenter. ProjectCenter will create several files in the project, including AppController.m. This file doesn't get created when you start an application in Gorm instead.

One of the turorials I found on the internet did not show ProjectCenter creating this AppController.m file, but it was written way back in 2001, so evidently this feature was added since then. This is the tutorial linked from the gnustep.org web site, and it's quite disappointing that a more up-to-date one isn't available. Worse yet, there seems to be no other documentation for ProjectCenter other than a FAQ list.

Another tutorial mentions the AppController, but then since it has you create the application in Gorm, bypassing ProjectCenter, you end up having to create AppController.h and AppController.m in a regular text editor.

There is another program called Project Manager which is supposed to be “an alternative Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for GNUstep”. However, I have noticed that when I'm in ProjectCenter and go to edit code it uses Project Manager. It doesn't seem to matter how I set the editor in preferences. It always uses Project Manager as the editor. I assume this has something to do with the way that GNUstep has been packaged for Ubuntu. Unfortunately, I also have had trouble figuring out how to make the font bigger in Project Manager's editor window, so it is kind of annoying. Of course, you should still be able to edit the files yourself outside the IDE using vim or kate or whatever.

GNUstep Renaissance is an alternative way to develop UI's. It allows you to create GUI's for both GNUstep and Cocoa described by XML documents instead of using Gorm or Interface Builder. I haven't explored this too much yet. It kinda feels like a non-standard way of doing things and it seems like one should learn the standard way first. Also, I don't think there's any way to develop iPhone applications using Renaissance. (You can't develop iPhone applications using GNUstep either. However, you could prototype applications in GNUstep and later port them.)