Re: Which ObjC2.0 features are missing in the latest GCC?

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi,


On 11/24/19 2:24 AM, Yavor Doganov wrote:
> I don't know why Debian is important, but they cannot be made
> available as an option.  It would mean duplicate packages with
> different names -- the release team will not allow it and the
> ftpmasters will not allow it.


I can tell for my experience why Debian is important: it has been my 
first serious Linux distribution after coming from NetBSD. It was the 
only distribution which support(ed) 68k!

Also, it is still important now because it is the base for Ubuntu, a 
very popular distribution which often carries on things from Debian "as 
is". Raspbian is also debian based. So, supporting Debian well, helps a 
big part of the FOSS community.

While I still use Debian on PowerPC, I now switched to Devuan on amd64 
and x86 for a reason you can imagine ad a very unfortunate Debian 
decision, but I still feel "at home" like on older Debian.


> You probably weren't around when we (GNUstep people in Debian) had to
> scrap and fight to prevent it from being removed.  GNUstep in Debian
> back then was undermaintained and violated the FHS, it was also full
> of bugs (that is, obvious bugs such as frequent failures to build from
> source) and blatant bugs solely due to packaging.  Hubert wrote a tool
> to FHS-ify most of the packages, we fixed most bugs and we had a
> helping hand from the Debian GCC maintainers who said it would be very
> worthwile to keep GNUstep in Debian, at least as a testing ground for
> GCC.


Although I never liked that FHS imposition, I think too it was very 
worthwhile!

Also, it meant packagers and users: I got bug reports and patches which 
contributed in making upstream software better.


> And that's what it's been, more or less; GNUstep had a rapid decline
> in the user base some years ago and it appears it is not going to
> recover.  All the Clangs in the world are not going to help you with
> that.  But in your quest for popularity you may lose some of the solid
> foundations that are still keeping this project afloat.


I agree on that, although I don't know how hoe accurate those statistics 
are (since popcon never worked for me in 10 years!). Most persons will 
install GNUstep on Debian for its applications and we know that it is 
not very appealing since a long time. Although "now" you could argue 
that there is no development due to lack of clang, it would be a 
fallacy: the reasons are much older and deeper than that!


Riccardo