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Re: Proposal: remove the Obj-C++ front end
On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 10:20 PM, Steven Bosscher <stevenb.gcc@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 9:54 PM, IainS <developer@sandoe-acoustics.co.uk> wrote:
>> No Asbestos required - but .. I do have some observations..
>>
>> ?I write pretty much all my serious (day-job) code in ObjC and..
>> ... ?I have stated that it's an intention to make *that*, at least work at
>> V2 on FSF.
>>
>> Having said that:
>>
>> a) ?I have not anything like as much attachment to ObjC++ ...
>> b) We are all limited in the amount of time we can allocate to FSF ..
>
> Right. I am not suggesting ObjC should go away at all. It clearly has
> users and it's pretty much isolated. It mixes with the C front end, of
> course, but that is not a problem. With ObjC++, you have a front end
> trying to unify the C, ObjC, and C++ front ends with itself. That's
> not even comparable.
>
> Besides, the ObjC language makes sense, whereas Obj-C++ combines the
> worst of ObjC with the worst of C++ (or so I'm told by people who
> should know what they're talking about ;-)
I thought Obj-C++ was most about ObjC - C++ interoperability
because all the OS-X UI runtime is written in ObjC which makes
it hard to write a pure C++ GUI application.
Aside from all the rest as one of the four RMs I am ok with
removing the Obj-C++ FE based on the broken promises by
Apple (and also based on my own experience breaking it
more than once and having to spend time fixing it - very bad
experience with both the work on gimplification unit-at-a-time
and with the LTO required cleanup of EH support).
As for an ack or a nack you should seek C and C++ FE maintainers
opinion (not so that of the crowd).
Note that if ever the state of ObjC is improved and somebody
wants to work on Obj-C++ again the FE can be resurrected
easily - but there is no reason for it to stay around broken
as it is (which it now does since 4.3).
Richard.