Re: Suitability for production code?

[Nicola Pero]

On 7 Oct 2008, at 18:22, Gregory Weston wrote:

> This is an overly blunt question, but my timeframes right now are
> shorter than I'd like. I've used NeXTstep a bit and Cocoa extensively
> but I'm new to GNUstep. A client to whom I cannot sell a Mac, but who
> has embraced Linux, has approached me to write the replacement for an
> old Windows app - written with Borland's Delphi environment - and I'd
> prefer to use an OpenStep derivative this time around. So I have,
> literally this week, begun poking at GNUstep. The app is  
> algorithmically
> simple - and I have the benefit of being intimately familiar with the
> Delphi app, having written it as an employee - but needs to be
> bullet-proof.
>
> What I'm really looking for is opinions, anecdotes, etc on how stable
> and robust the GNUstep version of Foundation is. I know I'm up to it
> because I've already done it, but GNUstep's my unknown. Can I trust  
> this
> as the base for a mid-volume server (say 50,000 transactions per day),
> heavily threaded with response windows measured in centiseconds, and
> uptime that needs to be very close to 100%?

Yes, you can trust it - both in terms of performance, and in terms of  
reliability. :-)

At Brainstorm we use it on a number of highly-critical large-scale  
installations that
have probably done a few billions transactions over the many years of  
operations
under all sorts of conditions and loads. ;-)

In fact we have been continuously pushing the limits of gnustep-base  
and invested
heavily in its development - especially in terms of performance and  
reliability.  We do
run heavy messaging and payment systems and applications on top of  
it.  A large
variety of them. :-)

On the downside, we have been bitten by occasional bugs in unstable  
releases.  Stick
with the stable releases for your production systems.  The temptation  
to run stuff
from subversion trunk is strong - particularly when there are  
enhancements that
you want in there ;-) - but you must resist.  We'd rather backport an  
interesting patch
to a stable release than use an unstable one, and we recommend you do  
the same. ;-)

Thanks