> > I'm still confused. What are you talking about? You asked a question and > then went down this discussion. A few things: > > 1) clang+libobjc2 support ARC > 2) I have gotten modern applications built and running on GNUstep using it > a) Eggplant > b) Algoriddim > c) OpenOutliner (in process) >
Sure. You and me can make it work. Now change the focus to a new developer who has written some stuff on MacOS who now wants to port it to Debian for example. He finds GNUStep and now thinks its a good start to use it to bring it to Linux that way. So he installs gnustep from the repository and compiles his code and it miserably fails with out of memory all the time. He then learns that ARC is required so he changes his Makefile to use the flag to enable ARC. Then the compiler will bark that its not supported with the gcc runtime. At this point we have lost a motivated potential GNUStep User/Developer. Now he has to recompile everything. When he now done that and his superduper App needs to be shipped, he needs to ship the whole GNUStep environment as well because the built-in doesnt support ARC. Thats what I do since several years. I build my own packages because there is no other way. However this only works for a single App. If you want to have multiple apps and some have old runtime and some use new you end up in a big mess where you need libraries in two copies with two runtimes etc. The goal is to attract developers. You can't do that by keeping the old runtime as default in distributions. Its just going to turn away new developers. Thats my point
