Re: ANN: GNUstep Windows MSVC Toolchain Scripts

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hello Richard,

Richard Stallman wrote:
>   > I am pleased to announce a new GNUstep project containing a set of
>   > scripts to build GNUstep for Windows with Clang and libobjc2 using
>   > the Visual Studio toolchain and MSVC ABI (i.e. without MinGW):
>
> Please keep recommending GCC as the compiler to choose.

We keep supporting GCC and I myself still recommend it.
We spent quite some time to smooth out bugs in the toolchain on windows
with mingw and the upcoming GNUstep release will be a huge step forward
in supporting GNUstep on windows with the "minimalist GNU on Windows"
and GCC - it is fully functional in 32bit and 64bit.

GCC is still supported and my compiler of choice on most systems,
especially those on which llvm+libobjc2 is not supported or don't run.

However, support of LLVM is desirable because
* GNUstep does not need any Objective 2.0 feature (yet) but some people
might want to be use them in their code, so they need to build also the
underlying libraries with clang/llvm
* Several OS are transitioning to LLVM asi their main compiler, making
GCC only optional and sometimes a second-class citizen. E.g. on OpenBSD
gcc is available extra and usable, on FreeBSD gcc is available, but
stripped of Objective-C, making llvm the only choice to run GNUstep software
* pure concept of freedom in compiler choice: I find it negative for a
software project to be "tied" do a specific compiler, although one can
be the preferred

GCC made stirred up and had several turnaways in the BSD camp due to its
license change.
But now it is support and features that are relegating it to a second
choice... and this part needs to be reverted. In case of GNUstep it
means keeping Objective-C as a first-level language (avoid releasing GCC
if objective-c is broken, which happened in the past) and improving its
runtime.

regards,
Riccardo

GNUstep developer