Re: libobjcxx

[Richard Frith-Macdonald]

On 5 Oct 2012, at 11:12, David Chisnall wrote:

> On 5 Oct 2012, at 10:56, Kal Conley wrote:
> 
>> If I move to using 'Makefile' instead of GNUmakefile to build it then do
>> I only need to run core/make/configure once after I build libobjc2 and
>> pass the path of the library to configure?
> 
> Yes.  Part of the reason for the Makefile is to solve the circular dependency 
> problem.  GNUstep Make depends on a working libobjc, so using it to install 
> libobjc doesn't work.  
> 
> On a modern platform for Objective-C development, you may not even have GCC 
> installed, so the bootstrapping process on, for example, FreeBSD, was to 
> install GCC and its libobjc, then install GNUstep Make, then uninstall GCC 
> and its libobjc, then install GNUstep libobjc, then reconfigure and reinstall 
> GNUstep Make, then proceed with the rest of the GNUstep install.  Now, you 
> just install libobjc first, then install the rest.  

Of course, this is no reason to support the Makefile rather than the 
GNUmakefile ... since the GNUmakefile does exactly the same thing (it does not 
depend upon gnustep-make).

Technically, the GNUmakefile can, and does, work in both environments (with or 
without gnustep-make), and could in principle use pretty much the same build 
rules (gnustep-make is a superset of make and can use all the same build rules) 
simply differentiating between two different install rules  for gnustep and 
non-gnustep installs.