The GNUstep Base library is a free software package implementing the API of the OpenStep Foundation Kit (tm), including later additions. This documentation package describes the core of the Base library, for documentation on additional classes, see the BaseAdditions documentation package.
Read the
GNUstep is generally compatible with the OpenStep specification and
with recent developments of the MacOS (cocoa) API. Where MacOS
deviates from the OpenStep API, GNUstep generally attempts to
support both versions. In some cases the newer MacOS APIs are
incompatible with OpenStep, and GNUstep usually supports the richer
version. See the
In order to deal with compatiblity issues, GNUstep uses two mechanisms - it provides conditionally compiled sections of the library header files, so that software can be built that will conform strictly to a particular API, and it provides user default settings to control the behavior of the library at runtime.
Adding an option to a makefile to define one of the following preprocessor constants will modify the API visible to software being compiled -
NB These preprocessor constants are used in
developer code (ie the code that users of GNUstep write)
rather than by the GNUstep software itself. They permit a
developer to ensure that he/she does not write code which depends
upon API not present on other implementations (in practice,
MacOS-X or some old OPENSTEP systems).
The actual GNUstep libraries are always built with the full
GNUstep API in place, so that the feature set is as consistent
as possible.
An array of strings that lists debug levels to be used within the program. These debug levels are merged with any which were set on the command line or added programmatically to the set given by the [NSProcessInfo-debugSet] method.
Setting the user default GSLogSyslog to
YES will cause log/debug output to be sent to
the syslog facility (on systems which support it), rather
than to the standard error stream. This is useful in
environments where stderr has been re-used strangely for
some reason.
On mswindows, where syslog does not exist, this flag instead
controls whether log/debug output is sent to the windows
event log.
Setting the user default GSLogThread to
YES will cause NSLog and debug output to
include the current thread in the logged message.
This is useful for debugging multi-threaded applications.
Setting the user default GSMacOSXCompatible to
YES will cause MacOS compatible behavior to be
the default at runtime. This default may however be overridden
to provide more fine grained control of system behavior.
Specifies whether the functions for producing strings describing geometric structures (NSStringFromPoint(), NSStringFromSize(), and NSStringFromRect()) should produce strings conforming to the OpenStep specification or to MacOS-X behavior. The functions for parsing those strings should cope with both cases anyway.
May be used to specify a default SOCKS5 server (and optionally
a port separated from the server by a colon) to which tcp/ip
connections made using the NSFileHandle extension methods
should be directed.
This default overrides the SOCKS5_SERVER and SOCKS_SERVER
environment variables.
Used to specify the name of the timezone to be used by the NSTimeZone class.
Specifies whether text property-list output should be in the default MacOS-X format (XML), or in the more human readable (but less powerful) original OpenStep format.
Reading of property lists is supported in either format, but only if GNUstep is built with the libxml library (which is needed to handle XML parsing).
NB. MacOS-X generates illegal XML for some strings - those which contain characters not legal in XML. GNUstep always generates legal XML, at the cost of a certain degree of compatibility. GNUstep XML property lists use a backslash to escape illegal chatracters, and consequently any string containing either a backslash or an illegal character will be written differently to the same string on MacOS-X.
An array of strings that lists the users prefered languages, in order or preference. If not found the default is just English.
There are some environment variables used by GNUstep base, where there would be problems obtaining data from the defaults system.
The default exception handler will either cause the program to simply terminate, or to crash - leaving a core dump. The standard behavior is to leave a core dump if the library was built for debugging, and to simply exit if it was not.
The CRASH_ON_ABORT environment variable can be used to override this behavior. If this is defined to NO, FALSE, or 0 then the program will simply exit when an exception occurs. Any other value of the variable will cause the program to generate a core dump.
When the a message is sent to a zombie object (see the
NSZombieEnabled environment variable) the
base library allows you to specify whether the program
should continue after logging the message, or have the
program abort.
By default, the program will attempt to continue.
The CRASH_ON_ZOMBIE variable can be used to
override this behavior. If this is defined to YES,
TRUE, or 1 then the program will log the
message sent to the zombie and then abort, producing a
core dump on systems where that is possible.
This is used to specify the default encoding for 8-bit
strings (those used by 'cstring' methods of NSString).
It may be any of the 8-bit encodings supported
by your system.
If this environment variable is not set, GNUstep attempts to use the characterset specified by your operating systems, locale information (using the standard nl_langinfo function) if possible.
If there is no usable operating system defined characterset, GNUstep defaults to NSISOLatin1StringEncoding.
Used in place of GNUSTEP_TARGET_CPU if the other is missing.
Used in place of GNUSTEP_TARGET_DIR if the other is missing.
Used in place of GNUSTEP_TARGET_OS if the other is missing.
Overrides the default value of the machine (hardware) name used on this system.
Overrides the default path used to locate subdirectories for GNUstep binaries withing bundles and applications. This is normally equivalent to a path made up of the GNUSTEP_TARGET_CPU and GNUSTEP_TARGET_OS
Overrides the default value of the operating system name used on this system.
Used to specify the timezone to be used if there is no timezone specified in the user defaults system. The preferred mechanism is to use the 'Local Time Zone' value from the user defaults system.
This functionality may have been disabled if the base library
was configured/built with the
--disable-environment-config-file option.
If it is operational, the environment variable overrides the
normal path to the gnustep config file used to determine the
locations of paths for the gnustep system (see later).
This is provided to support the odd situation where you may
want to simultaneously run applications using different sets
of resources but linked to a single copy of the base library,
or you want to use an alternative config file for some reason.
Used on ms-windows to locate the home directory.
Used on ms-windows to locate the home directory.
If there is no NSLanguages user default set, and there is no language infromation available in the native system locale mechanism, then this environment variable is used to provide a list of the languages that the user prefers to use. languages listed in this variable must be separated by semicolons.
This is used as the default value for the current user (as returned by the NSUserName() functions). If it is not specified, or contains an illegal value, other methods are used to get the user name.
Used to override the default value of the combination of standard libraries used to build binaries. This value locates the final subdirectory used to locate binaries.
This may be used in conjunction with NSZombieEnabled to specify whether the objects should really be deallocated. If you set this to YES, the zombie logging will only work until the deallocated memory is re-used.
If this is set to YES, then deallocation of an object causes
the object to be morphed into a Zombie ... a special object
which will call the GNUstep specific GSLogZombie() function
to log the method call.
You can set a breakpoint in this function and examine the
process memory if you are running under a debugger.
As this overrides actual object deallocation, all memory
allocated for objects will be leaked!
You can use the CRASH_ON_ZOMBIE environment
variable to force an abort afdter the message is logged.
Specifies the default socks server to be used when making
outgoing tcp/ip connections using NSFileHandle. This may
also specify a port after the host name (and spearated
from it by a colon).
This environment variable is used only if the GSSOCKS
user default is not set.
Equivalent to SOCKS5_SERVER, but used only if that is not defined.
Used to specify the timezone to be used if there is no timezone specified by any other mechanism. The preferred mechanism is to use the 'Local Time Zone' value from the user defaults system.
This file is the master configuration file for GNUstep. It
can be used to set the base location of all the standard
paths that GNUstep programs use or know about. The
location of this file depends on how the Base library was
configured and/or what operating system it was configured
on. On a GNU/Linux system, the default would be
/etc/GNUstep/GNUstep.conf for instance, while on mswindows
it would be ./GNUstep.conf.
The location of this file can be specified when the base library
is configured ... using the --with-config-file=
option of the configure script.
The configuration file is not actually required to exist, and
if it does not exist, then default values will be used.
for the standard path locations (these default values may
be specified using the --with-default-config=
option of the configure script.
If you want to force the internal defaults to be used,
you can use --with-config-file= to specify a path
with a trailing '/' (ie with no filename) as the base library
will refrain from trying to load configuration from a file
of no name.
System paths are defined by the following:
Paths for each user are defined by the following:
The user's home directory is taken to be the standard
home directory for that user on the system
On unix, that is the user's home directory from the password file,
while on windows it's the value given by the
HOMEDRIVE and HOMEPATH environment variables (or the USERPROFILE
environment variable if the others can't be used).
Support is provided to locate OS/PLATFORM directories. A conf file may provide the definitions below (with examples typical for when GNUstep is installed according to the Linux Filesystem Hierarchy standard):
These add to the path for NSSystemDomainMask, or NSLocalDomainMask as appropriate.
All the above values from the configuration file are made
available in the NSUserDefaults system at runtime, in the
GSConfigDomain of the defaults.
In addition, the configuration file may contain the key
GNUSTEP_EXTRA with a value set to be a comma separated
list of extra key names which are to be allowed in the config
file. This lets you add more key/value pairs to the config
file intended to be seen in the NSUserDefaults system.
However, you must take care that any key names you choose
do not conflict with variable names used with the GNUstep
Makefiles package or your configuration script may cause
problems when building software.
The exact format of the configuration file is expected to
be that of a basic unix "conf" style file, with one
key = value per line (the format a unix shell
can 'source' in order to define shell variables).
This configuration file uses the escape sequence and
quoting conventions of the standard bourne shell.
The only Keys permitted are those listed above (plus any
specified in the GNUSTEP_EXTRA list), and all consist of
uppercase letters, digits, and underscores, and must
not begin with a digit.
A value may be any quoted string (or an unquoted string
containing no white space).
Lines beginning with a hash '#' are deemed comment lines
and ignored.
The backslash character may be used as an escape character
anywhere in the file except within a singly quoted string
(where it is taken literally).
A backslash followed immediately by a newline (except in a
singly quoted string) is removed completely along with the
newline ... it thus serves to join lines so that they are
treated as a single line.
NB. Since ms-windows uses backslash characters in paths,
it is a good idea to specify path values in the config file
as singly quoted strings to avoid having to double all
occurrences of the backslash.
The configuration files system has two features which make it possible to build standalone packages containing the entire GNUstep system in a form which can be moved anywhere and just run.
Firstly, variables in the configuration file which define paths, are expected to by full path specifications, except for the special case in which they begin with dot-slash (./). In this case the text after the dot-slash is appended to the path to the directory containing the configuration file (or specified to contain the configuration file if no configuration file exists) to form the value used.
Secondly, If the value of the path built in to the base library
as the location of the config file (or specified by
the GNUSTEP_CONFIG_FILE environment variable unless that option
was disabled when the base library was configured)
begins with a dot and slash (./) then the path used for that
file is made relative to the base library.
ie the text after the dot-slash is appended to the path of the
directory containing the gnustep-base library.
So you can bundle the whole lot together in one directory, and configure various relative paths in that directory, then move the directory around wherever you like.
If you wish to lock down a production system for
distribution as a relocatable package, so it can be installed
anywhere, but users can't accidentally change the config file
and mess up paths, you can specify the config file name as
a path with a trailing slash so that the base library will
not read it, and will use the builtin default values.
To do this, you would configure using the options
--with-config-file=./ and
--with-default-file=myConfig where myConfig
is a file containing the paths you want to use relative to the
location the base library gets installed in.
The paths from that file will be built in to the base library
as defaults, and library will use them rather than attempting
to read a config file at runtime.
The user specific configuration file is read after the system
configuration file and may generally override values from the
main file. To prevent the use specific file from being read,
the system manager may define GNUSTEP_USER_CONFIG_FILE in the
main file to be an empty string.
In any case, the user specific file is not read if a
program is running setuid.
Unless disabled (as specified above) the presence of a
.GNUstep.conf file in a users home
directory permits the user to customize file locations using all
the same commands as the system directory, though any attempt
to redefine GNUSTEP_USER_CONFIG_FILE is of course ignored.
Attempts to redefine the users home directory at this level
are also ignored.
User specific files are stored in the locaton given by
GNUSTEP_USER_DIR (by default, the
GNUstep subdirectory of the users home
directory).
The defaults database for a user is stored in the
subdirectory of the users home directory given by
GNUSTEP_USER_DEFAULTS_DIR (by default, the
GNUstep/Defaults subdirectory).
On mswindows this may be set to be ':REGISTRY:' to have defaults
stored in the windows registry rather than in the standard file
format.
On any system this may be set to ':INTERNAL:' to use only
internal defaults domains (NSArgumentDomain, NSRegistrationDomain,
and GSConfigDomain).