Re: Swift calling into GNUStep Progress

[Gregory Casamento]

I am extremely impressed!!!  This is great!  Please let me know if I can help in any way.

GC

On Mon, Aug 7, 2023 at 10:35 AM <dr_clow@me.com> wrote:

Gregory, 

Thank you. I over last night, I was able to solve almost all the issues with calling into GNUStep's AppKit and Foundation. I've been able to set up buttons that respond to selectors, create objects at runtime and register them with the runtime. Right now, I am working on generalizing a sort of "Smart" version of obj_msgSend that allows me to not have to write a separate version of that handles each type parameters. As it is now, the only way I am getting it to work is to make a version of objc_msgSend that explicitly takes, for example, an NSRect, or id. 

This is probably because I just don't fully understand how pointers work in Swift. If anyone has any idea of how we can generalize the function, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks!

Below is a screen shot of a working app written in Swift. The button does work and does open the other window. It's pretty cool. You can see the code on my GitHub. It's messy still.  

On Aug 6, 2023, at 7:59 PM, Gregory Casamento <greg.casamento@gmail.com> wrote:

Hey, I just want you to know that this is VERY VERY cool!!!  Yours, GC

On Sun, Aug 6, 2023 at 12:05 PM <dr_clow@me.com> wrote:

I have solved the NSWindow initializer issue. I didn't realize I was passing Swift's Foundation.NSRect and not the C version. Sill haven't solved the issues regarding adding new ObjC classes to the runtime at runtime through Swift. Any ideas here would be appreciated.  

The image below is an GNUStep app written in Swift. The Menu is from the GORM file from the Terminal (I had to start somewhere!)

<Screenshot 2023-08-06 at 10.54.06 AM.png>

On Aug 5, 2023, at 9:03 PM, dr_clow@me.com wrote:

I just wanted to update everyone on my progress and solicit some help if possible.

State of my progress: 

I've had a lot of success patching into GNUStep's libobjc2 C runtime from within Swift. I've been able to create NSWindows through Swift, call methods, et cetera. You can see my progress here https://github.com/austintatiousness/GNUStepSwiftBridge . This assumes that you're running this from within OnFlapp's GNUStep Desktop. 

Solution to objcSendMessage: 

Because Swift doesn't allow variable argument parameters, I had to create various versions of objcSendMessage (e.g forSwift_objcSendMessage1, forSwift_objcSendMessage2, forSwift_objcSendMessage3) to accommodate various number of arguments. 

Problem 1: NSWindow initWithContentRect:styleMask:backing:defer

1) I am having trouble with the NSWindow.initWith… functions. I am sure that it is because of the way that I am casting all the values from Swift into to the C implementation. Either I just don't understand how the casting between Swift and C works OR I am just using the wrong variables.  I include a C version of the NSRect struct in my project. 

let  nsWindowClass =  objc_getClass("NSWindow")

var allocatedObject = forSwift_objcSendMessage(&nsWindowClass!.pointee, sel_registerName("alloc"))

var styleMask: UInt64 = 1 + 2 + 4

var backingStoreType: UInt64 = 0

var deferr: UInt8 = 0

var rect = NSRect(x: 200, y: 200, width: 300, height: 300)

allocatedObject = forSwift_objcSendMessage4(&allocatedObject!.pointee, sel_registerName("initWithContentRect:styleMask:backing:defer:"), &rect, &styleMask, &backingStoreType, &deferr)

I've tried several times to change the various integer types from UInt64 to UInt8 to no avail. 

Problem 2: Registering new classes  with the runtime. 

This is the current state of the HelloWorld target: 

For reasons I cannot explain, I am able to allocate a new obj-c object with objc_allocateClassPair and then register it using objc_registerClassPair but when objc_getClass using the same class name that I registered, it returns nil.

Any help would be appreciated. I am currently unable to make progress on adding delegates with out being able to register new ObjC classes with the runtime. 

Thanks!

--

Gregory Casamento
GNUstep Lead Developer / OLC, Principal Consultant
http://www.gnustep.org - http://heronsperch.blogspot.com
https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=352392 - Become a Patron

https://www.openhub.net/languages/objective_c - OpenHub standings

--

Gregory Casamento
GNUstep Lead Developer / OLC, Principal Consultant
http://www.gnustep.org - http://heronsperch.blogspot.com
https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=352392 - Become a Patron

https://www.openhub.net/languages/objective_c - OpenHub standings