Re: [ANN] GNUstep Objective-C Runtime 1.5

[Gerold Rupprecht]

Thanks David, and congratulations to all contributors!

Best wishes,

Gerold

On Wed, 2011-07-20 at 15:28 +0100, David Chisnall wrote: 
> Hi Everyone,
> 
> I've just pushed the 1.5 release of libobjc2 (yes, I said I would do this a 
> week ago, but PyObjC uncovered a couple of bugs that I wanted to fix first).  
> Thanks to Niels, Quentin, Sebastian, Wolfgang, Ludovic, and everyone else who 
> helped me find and fix bugs and test new features.
> 
> This is an important release for GNUstep, because it's one of the few times 
> when we're not playing catchup with Apple.  This release of the runtime 
> supports all of the Objective-C language features supported by the compiler 
> that Apple ships for OS X 10.7 and iOS 5 under the brand Apple's LLVM 
> Compiler 3[1].  
> 
> This includes support for automatic reference counting, which is now the 
> default development mode for OS X and is fully supported by the runtime, in 
> combination with LLVM / Clang trunk.
> 
> David
> 
> [1] Actually a snapshot of LLVM / Clang trunk from between 2.9 and 3.0.  LLVM 
> releases don't always happen at convenient times for Apple, so the use their 
> own release numbers.  
> 
> GNUstep Objective-C Runtime 1.5
> ===============================
> 
> This is the sixth official release of the GNUstep Objective-C runtime (a.k.a.
> libobjc2).  This runtime was designed to support the features of Objective-C 2
> for use with GNUstep and other Objective-C programs.  Highlights of this
> release include:
> 
> - Support for Apple-compatible garbage collection APIs, along with extensions
>   to support CoreFoundation-style explicit reference counting in a garbage
>   collected environment.  This uses the Boehm garbage collector and is enabled
>   by specifying boehm_gc=yes when building.  This requires version 7.1 or 
> later
>   of libgc.  Code compiled with -fobjc-gc can be mixed with code that
>   implements normal reference counting and with code compiled with
>   -fobjc-gc-only.  The runtime supports both GC and non-GC code when compiled
>   with GC support and will automatically select the correct behavior depending
>   on the loaded code.
> 
> - The runtime will now use Boehm GC for several internal data structures, if 
> it
>   is built with GC enabled.  This avoids the need for defensive programming
>   with respect to thread safety in several places.
> 
> - This is the first release to provide a superset of the functionality 
> provided
>   by the Mac Objective-C runtime, as shipped with OS X 10.6.
> 
> - Full support for Automatic Reference Counting (ARC), compatible with OS X
>   10.7 and iOS 5, including support for __weak references.
> 
> - The LLVM optimisation passes have been improved and better tested.  Code
>   compiled with them now passes the EtoileFoundation test suite.
> 
> You may obtain the code for this release from subversion at the following
> subversion branch:
> 
> svn://svn.gna.org/svn/gnustep/libs/libobjc2/1.5
> 
> Alternatively, a tarball is available from:
> 
> http://download.gna.org/gnustep/libobjc2-1.5.tar.bz2
> 
> The runtime library is responsible for implementing the core features of the
> object model, as well as exposing introspection features to the user.  The
> GNUstep runtime implements Apple's Objective-C Runtime APIs, and a small 
> number
> of GCC APIs for legacy compatibility.
> 
> This library is based on the Étoilé Objective-C Runtime, an earlier research
> prototype, and includes support for non-fragile instance variables,
> type-dependent dispatch, and object planes.  It is fully compatible with the
> FSF's GCC Objective-C ABI and also implements a new ABI that is supported by
> Clang and Étoilé's LanguageKit and is required for some of the newer features.
> 
> Although the runtime has been tested by several people, and is being used
> extensively by the Étoilé project, it is entirely new (MIT licensed) code and
> may still contain bugs.  If you come across any problems, please report them 
> to
> the GNUstep Developer mailing list <gnustep-dev@gnu.org>.  
> 
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-- 
Gerold Rupprecht <geroldr@bluewin.ch>
10, rue Louis-Curval
CH-1206 Genève, Suisse
Mobile: +41 (0) 79 914 29 52

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