Re: sync.m

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 28 Feb 2010, at 17:22, Gregory Casamento wrote:

> My apologies... I misunderstood the difficulty here.  I'd forgotten
> that there is ObjectiveC2 and libobjc2. :)
> 
> I'm not certain what the right solution here is beyond continuing to
> backport as best we can to ObjectiveC2.

I don't think it's a big deal ... this is fairly simple stuff.  The 
complex/clever part of libobjc2 that David is working on, is the stuff which 
isn't in the ObjectiveC2backward compatibility code anyway.

Basically we have two scenarios ...

1. modern systems using libobjc2 (fully featured ObjC2 code)
2. older systems (including most current production system) which won't ever 
get full featured ObjC2 support.

The compatibility library means we can use the same runtime API for both 
scenarios, but it's not going to give the older systems the full ObjC2 feature 
set... some of the functions in the API will be no-ops

> However, I think the question I asked in the previous email I sent is
> still relavent in general, though not related to this problem.

Yep .. I'd kind of like to say we can forget non-c99 systems.

I know that Riccardo uses some.
I know that Dr Nikolaus Schaller uses old compilers on his embedded systems

But ... I'm not sure that the old compilers are *required*, it's probably a 
hassle to get a newer toolchain working on these old systems, but maybe not a 
bad thing to upgrade.
At FOSDEM Felipe told me that the older compilers actually produce smaller 
code!  So that might be an issue for embedded systems.  However, I've also 
heard that Clang produces smaller code than current GCC (no idea if that's 
true), so it might pay for people currently using old compilers to look into 
updating to either the latest gcc or to Clang.

So ... while I wouldn't take it upon myself to unilaterally insist on c99 
compiler support yet, I would be strongly in favour of at least putting it on a 
roadmap and requiring the people using those old compilers either commit to a 
timetable for updating, or provide a convincing argument why we shouldn't. 


PS. after a recent linux specific bugfix, it looks like clang from svn trunk is 
finally able to build a working version of gnustep-base on gnu/linux (well, 
passing all the expected regression tests and working for a few apps I tested) 
using David's libobjc2 and the non-fragile-ivar ABI.