Way ahead of you On Thu, Dec 3, 2015 at 15:01 Maxthon Chan <xcvi...@me.com> wrote:
> Dear Swift developers: > > Maybe you have never heard of it, but there have been several ongoing > efforts, like GNUstep and Cocotron, at maintaining an open source > Foundation reimplementation for alternative operating systems like Linux. > It seemed to me that the current release of Swift did not put such efforts > into consideration and brutally broke compatibility between Swift and > Objective-C on Linux. I understand the fact that Apple is unwilling to > release source code of Foundation, and this is usually where those > alternative implementations comes into play. > > Some of such projects, like GNUstep, are mature enough to allow existing > AppKit applications written in Objective-C, like TextEdit and Chess, to be > ported from OS X to Linux and Windows without changing too much, if any, > code, taking all modern Objective-C features like ARC and object > subscripting with stride, with a compatible version of LLVM compiler. > Meanwhile, with the current version of Swift, even if the Swift code is > written with calls to Objective-C runtime assuming the case on OS X, it is > broken under Linux even with libobjc linked in. > > I am here suggesting keeping the Objective-C bridge intact at least when > built with a compatible version of libobjc (and GNUstep project have one > already.) This will allow users of such alternative Foundation > reimplementations to use their favourite Foundation distribution in place > of the version provided by the Swift project, retaining the code > compatibility already established between OS X and Linux by those Swift > reimplementations. > > In such an environment the alternative Foundation implementation will > provide their own version of CoreFoundation and Foundation, implemented > using C and Objective-C, as well as a libobjc that supports ARC. The Swift > environment would be built without its own CoreFoundation and Foundation, > but linking against the provided version instead, bridging calls just like > OS X version of Swift does. This will also allow the new Swift platform to > take full advantage of the AppKit came with the alternative Foundation, > allow porting full OS X apps to Linux a lot easier. The above also applies > for porting iOS apps, if the alternative Foundation implementation also > comes with their own UIKit. > > Max_______________________________________________ > Gnustep-dev mailing list > Gnustep-dev@gnu.org > https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnustep-dev >
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