Re: GDL2 on MacOS X

[Stéphane Corthésy]

On Wednesday, Nov 20, 2002, at 04:21 Europe/Zurich, Adam Fedor wrote:

> Stéphane Corthésy wrote:
> > I have some questions now:
> > - What is the current state of gdl2?? How compatible is it with EOF 
> > 2? WebObjects 4.5's EOF implementation?
> > - Do gdl2 developers plan to support MacOS X? If they reply "no", no 
> > need to read remaining questions ;-)
>
> They (we?) should. Although I don't think any of the main developers 
> use MacOSX so we would rely on patches and bug reports from others.
>
> I don't think your patch will work though, since you  need the garbage 
> collecting classes for gdl2. We're working on a compatibility library 
> that you could compile on MacOSX to get this to work.


Well, if we could avoid using that garbage collector... You wrote that 
gdl2 should be usable without GC, so why hardcode superclass 
dependencies?
I admit my patch cannot be used as-is; in fact it was just a 
quick-and-dirty one to allow me compile gdl2 on MacOS X, and launch 
discussion ;-)
Anyway, you should at least have a careful look at it: it corrects at 
least some bugs in your code (syntax), and points out some problems 
like inter-dependency between the two libs (EOControl and EOAccess).


> > - Does it even compile on a GNUStep system?? I had to correct some 
> > code, independant of platform.
>
> Well, understand that it's not even a released version yet, it's just 
> in CVS.


No problem. I realized that yesterday when looking more carefully at 
the code. I also realized that your goal is WebObjects 4.5.1 
compatibility, that's great!


> > - gdl2 depends on GNUStep-specific classes, like GCArray, etc. Can 
> > this dependency be removed? There are also references to methods not 
> > implemented in MacOS X, like subclassResponsibility:, but in these 
> > cases we could implement categories on MacOS X for GNUStep 
> > compatibility.
>
> see above.
>
> > - gdl2 is not consistent regarding retain/release and garbage 
> > collecting; sometimes macros are used for retain/release, sometimes 
> > method calls are used. How should it be done?
>
> macros should be used, since it's possible to compile GNUstep with 
> automatic garbage collection, so that retain/releases aren't even 
> needed.


I understand that. The fact is that currently gdl2 implementation is 
not consistent at all. Needs a spring cleanup.


> > Finally, I suppose there are a lot of Cocoa developers willing to use 
> > EOF... erh gdl2 ;-)
> > I suppose GNUStep people will find help among them. There are also a 
> > lot of former OpenStep/WO4 developers that could help, now that there 
> > is a concrete opensource EOF for Cocoa. So please, subscribe to that 
> > list, checkout gdl2 and give GNUStep developers needed help. I'll try 
> > to.
>
> Yes. Thanks!
>
>
> --
> Adam Fedor, Digital Optics Corp.      | I'm glad I hate spinach, 
> because
> http://www.doc.com                    | if I didn't, I'd eat it, and 
> you
>                                       | know how I hate the stuff.

I'm eager to see that lib working!


Stéphane