Blocks are a bigger problem than memory management. It is holding us back.
On Fri, Nov 22, 2019 at 12:38 PM Fred Kiefer <fredkie...@gmx.de> wrote: > > Am 22.11.2019 um 15:44 schrieb Andreas Fink <af...@list.fink.org>: > > > > The fact is that gcc can not do ARC. This is the main show stopper for > gcc. > > On the other hand, switching from gcc to clang is not a problem for > "traditional programming style" programmers. > > > > The only problem I can see is platforms which gcc supports but clang > does not. So the real question is are there any users who use ObjC stuff > with GnuStep under, lets say strange embedded systems. > > Given ObjC does not have a bright future under gcc anyway (as they have > still not implemented ObjC 2.0 features after like 10 years it's out now), > does mean it will only get worse. > > > > Besides that we have to consider that sticking to gcc will also hinders > newcomers to get involved. And this i I think is a important point. > > The developers hehre with 20 years+ experience will have no problem > working around non ARC stuff and going backwords because we all know the > old way. > > The youngsters out there however don't. If we want to get Gnustep into > the modern area, we will need to be attractive to newcomes and this means > keeping up with the modern API's etc. And gcc is miserably failing here. > Thats the main problem, not if you don't want to use ARC (which is still > fine) or not. Others want to use ARC but can't under GCC. > > > > In other words, going for clang doesnt mean ObjC 1.0 code wont run but > it means a lot of ObjC2.0 code will start to run. > > This is another discussion I would have preferred to stay out of. We had > this and other similar discussions so many times before. To me it just > seems not worthwhile to participate once more. > > There are many benefits that ObjC 2.0 support with clang could bring, > still I can understand why some people prefer to stay with a compiler and a > language they know. I myself use gcc and even with its limitations it > allows me to do useful programming for GNUstep. And many times gcc has > pointed to bugs in the code where clang accepted the code. (The opposite is > also true, it really has been good for us to have two different compilers > to inspect our code.) What I would never do is to argue for others to use > gcc. Just use the compiler you prefer. > > And this is where this discussion is getting odd. It has been possible to > use GNUstep code in ObjC 2.0 projects, thanks to the great work David has > been doing. And if we are honest the work to support this inside of GNUstep > wasn’t much. Just using a few macros here and there and things work. We > could even go further and have a few more macros that allow us to specify > the property attributes in GNUstep base and redefine the ASSIGN, RETAIN and > RELEASE etc macros as noops and with a bit of code cleanup GNUstep base > could be compiled with ARC. All of this should be possible while still > keeping support for gcc. Even for simple block usage I am sure that if > David and I set down for a weekend we could come up with a macro to define > a callable block (probably without capturing variables and without ARC > special cases, just the most common case). It is just that the need for > this hasn’t come up. > > I really don’t see gcc support is itself holding us back. At least not > more than the incomplete CoreFoundation, or the fact that base is not build > on top of core base, the binary incompatible of Foundation and GNUstep base > or the missing usage of C++ in the implementation of GNUstep. These and > some other factors seem more important to me. But if we start to change all > of these, the resulting project would be quite different from current > GNUstep. And most likely we would have lost most of the current GNUstep > developers in the transition process. Nobody can tell whether we would gain > new active core developers through this change. I really doubt that and > therefor would prefer not to drop gcc support. If you disagree, fine. But > for GNUstep it would be great if you could pledge to work on the code in > the next few years. Otherwise the project will be dying even faster than it > is now. > > Fred > > > -- Gregory Casamento GNUstep Lead Developer / OLC, Principal Consultant http://www.gnustep.org - http://heronsperch.blogspot.com http://ind.ie/phoenix/
