Re: GNUstep <-> Cocoa compatibility

[Artem Baguinski]

thanks a lot everybody, i think i've got the picture.

On Sat, Jan 03, 2004 at 07:26:48PM +0000, Nicola Pero wrote:
> > > i rather want the following: develop an application in GNU environment
> > > until i'm satisfied with it, checkout it from cvs onto MacOSX machine
> > > and build it to run on MacOS. 
> > > 
> > > the source tree will contain c/objective-c sources and GNUmakefile and
> > > some images, will i need something else to make it build and integrate
> > > itself into MacOS?
> 
> The way I do it (which is not necessarily the only way, and not
> necessarily the right one) is - I use gnustep-make to build on both
> GNUstep and Apple.  On Apple, gnustep-make is only used to build; once you
> have built your frameworks (or applications), you don't need it to run
> them - you can install and use them as native Apple
> frameworks/applications.
> 
> In practice, to build you have GNUmakefiles; once you know they work on
> GNUstep, they should work on Apple too.
> 
> The source code is the same on both platforms; but you really need to try
> it out on both platforms periodically to make sure it still works on both.  
> :-)
> 
> I use Renaissance to build the GUI, and I also take advantage of the
> RELEASE / ASSIGN macros defined in Renaissance (these are GNUstep-only
> macros otherwise, but I find ASSIGN() *really* useful to prevent memory
> allocation mistakes).  Generally I use separate menu .gsmarkup files for
> the two platforms, so that they feel really native in the choice, location
> and naming of the menu entries; I use the same .gsmarkup files on the two
> platforms for all windows and widgets (that depends on taste, if you have
> enough time and taste, you might want to have different ones on the two
> platforsm).
> 
> If you look at the Renaissance examples, stuff like
> Examples/Applications/Finger, you should get a clear idea of what I mean.
> 
> You can build an application on GNUstep using those tools, and if you
> don't do exceptionally weird things ;-) it should not be difficult to have
> it run on Apple too, building from exactly the same sources and files.  
> Of course if, from the very beginning, you periodically try it out on
> Apple you'd spot out Apple problems sooner and would probably get a more
> stable and robust application on Apple.  But porting later is an option
> too.
> 
> In any case, in theory yes you can use the same source code, the same
> makefiles, the same images, the same .gsmarkup files, in practice yes this
> all works for me at least :-) but I recommend testing on both platforms to
> get a good product. :-)

-- 
gr{oe|ee}t{en|ings}
artm