Re: GCC and Clang

[H. Nikolaus Schaller]

> Am 11.02.2022 um 16:48 schrieb Umberto Cerrato <umbertocerrato@outlook.it>:
> 
> 
> 
>> Il giorno 11 feb 2022, alle ore 16:42, H. Nikolaus Schaller 
>> <hns@goldelico.com> ha scritto:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> Am 11.02.2022 um 16:36 schrieb Umberto Cerrato <umbertocerrato@outlook.it>:
>>> 
>>> wow!
>>> could that mean it would be easier to install "gnustep"? (and program objc 
>>> programs?)
>>> because I was actually asking: is there a more lightweight compiler than 
>>> those available?
>> 
>> Hm. No. My proposal is to just extend standard gobjc by those "modern" 
>> features it is lacking.
>> Not writing e.g. a full ObjC -> C translator and competing with gcc or clang.
> 
> ok.
> 
>> 
>> BTW: such a full preprocessor did exist long ago (POC = Portable Object 
>> Compiler):
>> http://www.sai.msu.su/sal/F/1/POC.html
> 
> thank you for the link.

It seems as if something is here:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/objc/
https://sourceforge.net/p/objc/code/ci/master/tree/

Seems to be actively developed.

or something on github: https://github.com/fkhannouf/objc-bootstrap

> 
>> 
>> Unfortuangtely the download links are broken but there may be copies 
>> somewhere around. 
>> 
>>> 
>>> by the way I am trying to figure out how to install gnustep...
>> 
>> That is a different story.
> 
> yes
> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> u
>>> 
>>>>> Il giorno 11 feb 2022, alle ore 16:29, H. Nikolaus Schaller 
>>>>> <hns@goldelico.com> ha scritto:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>>> Am 08.02.2022 um 17:38 schrieb Gregory Casamento 
>>>>>> <greg.casamento@gmail.com>:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> The way I see it, we have two ways we can go.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Usually there is a third...
>>>>> 
>>>>>> In each, I have outlined what I believe needs to be done.  It may or may 
>>>>>> not be complete:
>>>>> 
>>>>> GCC
>>>>> 1) Implement syntactic sugar 
>>>>> a) This includes @[], @{}, and @autorelease as well as
>>>>> b) Various @property directives
>>>>> c) Improvements to the GCC libobjc to support the new syntax
>>>>>   i) Implementation of ARC in the runtime
>>>> 
>>>> What about a preprocessor for gcc to add the missing syntactic sugar?
>>>> 
>>>> It may be much easier to maintain than digging into gcc source code.
>>>> 
>>>> BTW: this is the same method as ObjC did come to our world.
>>>> Brad Cox wrote a preprocessor for C...
>>>> 
>>>> It was NeXT who integrated ObjC syntax into gcc, according to
>>>> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11639658
>>>> 
>>>> IMHO we should start to think more in modular vs. monolithic approaches,
>>>> especially as computing power has increased and developer's time
>>>> is limited. Splitting into preprocessor and compiler would be such
>>>> a modularization. Costs some processor time but saves developer's time.
>>>> 
>>>> Of course there are limitations to what a simple preprocessor
>>>> can do (e.g. it needs quite a lot of logic in the AST to track data
>>>> types of symbols), but as far as I see especially @[], @{}, and 
>>>> @autorelease
>>>> should not be extremely difficult. They are more or less macros that
>>>> can be expanded.
>>>> 
>>>> ARC is a different topic. But I think it can also be done by a
>>>> preprocessor. If a full compiler can determine when to add retain/release
>>>> from static syntax analysis, a preprocessor can as well. Again provided
>>>> that it has a grammer and builds an abstract syntax tree. Well, such
>>>> a preprocessor is sort of a fragment of a fully fledged compiler. It is
>>>> lacking code optimization rules, memory and register allocation, ABI
>>>> compatible assembler output, helper libraries etc.
>>>> 
>>>> In other words: it lacks all problems which we have with LLVM/Clang and
>>>> gcc.
>>>> 
>>>> Generally this would give objc programmers a solution and gcc developers
>>>> time to fully integrate such features (and then the preprocessor
>>>> becomes a simple "cat <input | gcc" command...).
>>>> 
>>>> What I don't know is how attractive this is. Well, I have code for an
>>>> ObjC processor [1] which is a good basis but it appears as if nobody
>>>> wants to jump on this idea and help to develop it.
>>>> 
>>>> just my 2cts, Nikolaus
>>>> 
>>>> [1]: https://github.com/goldelico/mySTEP/tree/master/ObjC
>>