Re: ObjC on non-Apple platforms?

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 13 Jun 2008, at 10:21, hns wrote:

> > I do not feel that any time spend on it will be worth a dime. I  
> > posted
> > diverse bug reports but nothing has happend in ages. The bug list of
> > GNUstep dates back to:
> > 2003 and some of the bug reports not even have been acknowledged. So
> > why should anyone be willing to spend considerabl time on bug-reports
> > which never got read?
> >
> > No don't tell me it's free software, do something about it
> > yourself. There is more broken in GNUstep than working. Even getting
> > the IDE running is not possible.
> > Friedrich
>
> Maybe,
> because one still wants to have ObjC on non-Apple platforms as the
> original
> question was?
>
> Yes, there are bugs reported in 2003 - but if you look, the discussion
> if and how
> it should be solved dates up to 2008. I don't know if that is good or
> not, but
> it shows there is activity and willingness to solve issues (if they
> are important).

And the vast majority of projects (and I include commercial/ 
proprietory products here, not just free or open source software) have  
some very long-standing bug reports (either because particular bugs  
are particularly intractable, or because they are particularly low  
priority).  In this respect GNUstep is quite typical.  Looking to find  
the age of the oldest bug you can find is no indicator of activity.

> If you refer to e.g. http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?19728
> there is a response and discussion. But I think you are using RIGS
> (which is based on GNUstep). This appears to be in 0.2.2 state since
> 2005
> and the documentation says:
>
> "Currently RIGS is very usable though far from bullet proof. You'll
> find some real applications written in the Testing and Examples
> directories of the source tree showing that RIGS can really be used on
> a day to day basis."
>
> Maybe, you have found a bullet...

IIRC Rigs is currently unmaintained, and you probably need to use an  
old version of GNUstep to work with it.
It would be nice if someone volunteered to maintain it.