Re: Status of Swift - Objective-C/GNUstep Interoperability

[Gregory Casamento]

Hugo,

On Thu, Sep 23, 2021 at 2:13 PM Hugo Melder <hugo@melder.dev> wrote:

Hi,

In the last couple of weeks/months I've worked a lot with the GNUstep frameworks and really like the intuitiveness of Objective-C/Cocoa. I recently implemented some new NSURL methods and the NSURLSessionDownloadTask. It's already merged :) (Thank you for all the tips and tricks you gave me while reviewing my code).

Our pleasure.  I saw your changes and they are excellent.  Thank you for contributing to the project.

 

Now I have to ask one question: Are there any plans to add interoperability between Swift and Objective-C for the libobjc2 runtime?

I've been thinking about this for a while now.  I believe it's possible in one of two ways...  We could take a non-invasive approach such as is discussed here:

https://www.alwaysrightinstitute.com/swift-objc-bridge/

Or we could modify the runtime of swift to integrate objc.

Both of these approaches would require that we have a better understanding of how swift translates the Objective-C method names to their swift equivalent.   There are a number of files in the frameworks which, I believe, give a hint to the swift compiler about how to handle this.

Up to now, only research has been done along these lines, but nothing concrete.   Anyone who wishes to take this task on may feel free to do so.  I am happy to share my thoughts on how to do this or to entertain alternative solutions.

 

It would attrack new developers and help improve the GNUstep frameworks. I don't like Swift syntax and its inconsistencies but this is a personal preference and at the end interop is better than what we have now.

This is true.  It would open the door to more developers participating in the community.

Yours Sincerely,

--

Gregory Casamento
GNUstep Lead Developer / OLC, Principal Consultant
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