DevelKit (Was: Re: autogsdoc questions and suggestions)

[Stefan Urbanek]

Hi,

On 2003-07-22 07:07:56 +0200 Richard Frith-Macdonald <richard@brainstorm.co.uk> 
wrote:

> On Tuesday, July 22, 2003, at 12:25 AM, Stefan Urbanek wrote:
>
> > http://savannah.nongnu.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs/develkit/DevelopmentKit/ 
> > Frameworks/DevelopmentKit/ClassTemplate.m?rev=1.4&content-type=text/ 
> > vnd.viewcvs-markup
>
> Of the three links, this was the one which (I think) gave me the best  idea of 
> what the project is about...
> enough to interest me anyway.

thanks.

> To me the obvious application is a gui-based code generator, where you  do 
> practically everything
> through the gui, and just enter small fragments of code ... like  
> ProjectCenter.app taken to an extreme.

YES! :-) Something like that was the basic idea.
- To free developer from doing/writing stuff that can be written automatically. 
- To be able to create applications that can generate objective-c source code, 
so 'developers' needs to know just a little about the language (or nothing if 
they are using some graphical tools)
- To be able to create application (PC substitute) with functionality similar 
to Smalltalk class browser

Thing is, that now there are more and more people that need to have some stuff 
done on their computers. Usualy theay are not well educated in programming, and 
this framework allows higher level of application building interfaces. Possible 
usages are for example simulation tools (joining functional building blocks, 
compositing agent's behaviour,...). Or there should be some applications for 
fast prototyping of applications. Another exaple is application that uses some 
graphcal language to describe programs (direct code creation from UML).

Again, applications that use this framework are mainly NOT for hard programming 
proffesionals, but for people with just a little of programming knowledge. 
Remember that they are not going to learn programming as they do not need to. 
Ddevelopers/programmers should provide them with easy to use tools so they can 
imlpement their ideas.

> What else are you thinking of doing?

See above. Basic functionality i want there is:

- class code generation (methods, descriptions, ivars,...)
- automatic methods (accessor methods with respect to retained/nonretained 
variables, dealloc method, many other possibilities depending on the kind of 
target applications)
- kind of 'implemented protocols' - sets of methods that can be reused in more 
classes
- automatic building using gnustep-make package (creating objective-c 
interface/wrapper for make package)

Want something more or any other ideas?

So, basicaly it is about Objective-C generation, not parsing. You store the 
code in form you like (graphical objects for example) and this framework 
creates code for you. Objcetive-C is just intermediate product, like assembler 
code generated from C by GCC.

Or you can think of the framework as ObjectiveC API for development system 
(objc, make, gcc,...).

> Are you planning to build such a  gui app?

Kind of. I'll try to implement something like Smalltalk class browser for easy 
class editing.

For GNUstep there are many possible ussages too:
- interface generation from Gorm.app
- Makefile creation from ProjectCenter.app
- (any) templates for autogsdoc without need of XML intermediate format
- ObjectiveC documentation where you just need some objective c parser (taken 
from autogsdoc for example) and set of templates in any format you like.

Are you interested?

Stefan
--
http://urbanek.host.sk

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you 
win.
- Mahatma Gandhi