ObjC on non-Apple platforms?
copx
Will Objective C 2.0 ever be available on anything but Apple's platforms? I
wonder because I am interested in Objective C, but I am not interested in
vendor lock-in.
Right now my plan is to use the FSF version (i.e. Objective C 1.0) without
any class libraries (neither Cococa nor GNUStep). That way it should be easy
to port the software to any platform with a complete GCC port. However,
Objective C 2.0 looks sexy, so I would like to know whether there is hope
that this standard might be supported by the portable FSF GCC in future.
That brings me to another question about the future of Objective C. I have
heard that the FSF Objective C runtime is de-facto unmaintained, so I am
worried that it might be full of bugs nobody will ever fix or that Objective
C support will be dropped completely in future.. Any info on that?
Friedrich Dominicus
> Some questions about ObjC beyond Apple:
>
> Will Objective C 2.0 ever be available on anything but Apple's platforms? I
> wonder because I am interested in Objective C, but I am not interested in
> vendor lock-in.
Hm, isn't the Objective-C compiler from Apple based on gcc? So where
can be the vendor lock-in
>
> That brings me to another question about the future of Objective C. I have
> heard that the FSF Objective C runtime is de-facto unmaintained, so I am
> worried that it might be full of bugs nobody will ever fix or that Objective
> C support will be dropped completely in future.. Any info on that?
Where did you got that from? Howerver I'm not that much suprised I
asked a question about the status of GNUstep, I found that terrible
bugs that I though my system was broken....
I wrote some "awful" patches but did not even have heard again. And I
just can not find any useful debugger besides the stuff from XCode. So
to me Objective-C on non Mac OS X is "non-existant"....
I once also tried to install opengroupware and now I have two complete
different Objective-C packages installed here....
It's really unbelievable that this fantasitic language does have that
bad support. But it's obviously that there is not paid market for
it. It seems no-one is using it seriously for curent development. I
guess they strand at Java or maybe Mono or even worse C++ ;-(
Regards
Friedrich
--
Please remove just-for-news- to reply via e-mail.
Friedrich Dominicus
> That brings me to another question about the future of Objective C. I have
> heard that the FSF Objective C runtime is de-facto unmaintained, so I am
> worried that it might be full of bugs nobody will ever fix or that Objective
> C support will be dropped completely in future.. Any info on that?
decent payment?
No
Would you be suprised that than nearly nobody cares?
whitemice
> > wonder because I am interested in Objective C, but I am not interested in
> > vendor lock-in.
> Hm, isn't the Objective-C compiler from Apple based on gcc? So where
> can be the vendor lock-in
There is the issue of the framework, beyond the compiler. I like
Objective-C as a language. But GNUStep is a mess (breaks
compatibility between versions) and the documentation borders on
comical; the documentation is pretty much the line "Description
forthcoming." repeated over and over and over....
> I once also tried to install opengroupware and now I have two complete
> different Objective-C packages installed here....
I'm not certain what you mean. Current versions of opengroupware use
the GNU provided libobjc. Antique versions used a different libobjc
(libobjc-lf).
> It's really unbelievable that this fantasitic language does have that
> bad support. But it's obviously that there is not paid market for
> it. It seems no-one is using it seriously for curent development. I
> guess they strand at Java or maybe Mono or even worse C++ ;-(
Mono! :) For me the language is very much secondary to the quality
and portability of the framework.
Friedrich Dominicus
>> > Will Objective C 2.0 ever be available on anything but Apple's platforms? I
>> > wonder because I am interested in Objective C, but I am not interested in
>> > vendor lock-in.
>> Hm, isn't the Objective-C compiler from Apple based on gcc? So where
>> can be the vendor lock-in
>
> There is the issue of the framework, beyond the compiler. I like
> Objective-C as a language. But GNUStep is a mess (breaks
> compatibility between versions) and the documentation borders on
> comical; the documentation is pretty much the line "Description
> forthcoming." repeated over and over and over....
Oh, yes I understand all to well what you mean....
>
>> I once also tried to install opengroupware and now I have two complete
>> different Objective-C packages installed here....
>
> I'm not certain what you mean. Current versions of opengroupware use
> the GNU provided libobjc. Antique versions used a different libobjc
> (libobjc-lf).
Really? Last time I tried it was horrible mess to setup maybe they've
got it done better. But I guess the make 2 will still not workl
Have a nice day
Jimmy Miller
> "copx" <co...@gazeta.pl> writes:
>
>> Some questions about ObjC beyond Apple:
>>
>> Will Objective C 2.0 ever be available on anything but Apple's platforms? I
>> wonder because I am interested in Objective C, but I am not interested in
>> vendor lock-in.
> Hm, isn't the Objective-C compiler from Apple based on gcc? So where
> can be the vendor lock-in
Even if Objective-C runs on other platforms, the Cocoa framework that is
one of its major selling points does not. There are also some useful
features introduced in Objective-C 2.0, like garbage collection, that
have yet to be added to GCC, AFAIK.
hns
solutions.de> wrote:
As one who regularily shows GNUstep and derivatives working on
handheld devices (e.g. on FOSDEM 2008 or LinuxTag 2008), I am just
wondering why where are no such bug reports or comments on the GNUstep
discussion lists.
I have never seen a project where bugs disappear magically and by
complaining on lists outside the project. It is always a cooperation
by someone who finds a bug, reports it and someone who fixes it. And
the more people work on fixing bugs the faster they are fixed.
Please direct your newsreader/mailing list subscriptions to e.g.
gnu.gnustep.help or gnu.gnustep.discuss
Best regards,
Nikolaus
BTW: there was just a discussion on ObjC-2.0 -
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/discuss-gnustep/2008-06/msg00034.html
Friedrich Dominicus
>
> Please direct your newsreader/mailing list subscriptions to e.g.
> gnu.gnustep.help or gnu.gnustep.discuss
diverse bug reports but nothing has happend in ages. The bug list of
GNUstep dates back to:
2003 and some of the bug reports not even have been acknowledged. So
why should anyone be willing to spend considerabl time on bug-reports
which never got read?
No don't tell me it's free software, do something about it
yourself. There is more broken in GNUstep than working. Even getting
the IDE running is not possible.
hns
> diverse bug reports but nothing has happend in ages. The bug list of
> GNUstep dates back to:
> 2003 and some of the bug reports not even have been acknowledged. So
> why should anyone be willing to spend considerabl time on bug-reports
> which never got read?
>
> No don't tell me it's free software, do something about it
> yourself. There is more broken in GNUstep than working. Even getting
> the IDE running is not possible.
> Friedrich
Maybe,
because one still wants to have ObjC on non-Apple platforms as the
original
question was?
Yes, there are bugs reported in 2003 - but if you look, the discussion
if and how
it should be solved dates up to 2008. I don't know if that is good or
not, but
it shows there is activity and willingness to solve issues (if they
are important).
If you refer to e.g. http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?19728
there is a response and discussion. But I think you are using RIGS
(which is based on GNUstep). This appears to be in 0.2.2 state since
2005
and the documentation says:
"Currently RIGS is very usable though far from bullet proof. You'll
find some real applications written in the Testing and Examples
directories of the source tree showing that RIGS can really be used on
a day to day basis."
Maybe, you have found a bullet...
Nikolaus