Johannes Brakensiek wrote: > would it be possible to somehow ship a clang runtime on Debian or > isn’t it? If it is how could it be achieved?
It is possible but not as an option/alternative. Either the whole GNUstep stack moves to Clang + the new runtime or it stays with GCC + the GCC runtime. To achieve the former, a preliminary discussion with the release team must be held, to sound their opinion about dropping architectures for about 85 packages, the transition plan and the way to solve the inevitable file conflict between libobjc4 (the GCC runtime) and for example libobjc2-4 (the new runtime). That's where the GCC maintainers' opinion should be taken into account. I guess the release team won't have any objection to dropping unofficial architectures but if s390x/ppc64el/mips* have to be dropped as well there could be a problem. Then a transition should be carried out, fixing all the bugs and dealing with all the issues that will arise, both for the core libraries and the reverse dependencies. Oh, and a decent rationale for the switch must be provided. If none of the present packages will benefit from the switch, it is hard to justify it. > It seems to me you are making this a „the egg or the chicken“ > problem, which it isn’t. Yes it is. Libraries and development tools are building blocks that help developers to write programs. If a program is useful and worth packaging, a Debian maintainer starts by packaging the tools and libraries it needs and then by packaging the program itself. Packaging libraries and development tools just because they are cool and it is expected that hordes of developers will write useful programs that utilize them is not a useful activity -- you have to justify their inclusion in the distro and a hypothetical future benefit is not a good argument. > If you don’t provide new tools for developers they are not going to > build new software for their users. It’s this way around not the > other and it’s no dilemma at all. So you are basically saying that just because Debian does not provide the right tools there is no software written yet? Sorry to say that but it's a ridiculous statement. > For me this cause is indeed a decision whether you are most > comfortable with the state in which GNUstep currently is or if you > would be more comfortable when it would develop to a further state, > maybe one where most ObjC currently is. If you want it to develop the > decision should be simple. This is a bogus argument, GNUstep supports these new features and developers who want to use them can do so. Debian cannot stop them. > Just one last thing to add: Cocoa/Mac software development is not > the same as proprietary software development. No, but free Cocoa software is in the same position as the "Java Trap" back when Java was proprietary. Here GNUstep comes to the rescue, but very few of their developers value freedom. They just want to get their app on some store and that's it. > - https://github.com/64characters/Telephone > - https://github.com/subethaedit/SubEthaEdit > - http://colloquy.info/ > - https://github.com/rburgst/time-tracker-mac Are these projects directly buildable/runnable with GNUstep configured for Clang and the modern runtime? I doubt it.