Re: Objective-C legacy code (ex: New Objective-C maintainer)

[Ovidiu Predescu <ovidiu at cup dot hp dot com>]

There are two parts to this question:

1) Is the GNU runtime going to be replaced with the Apple/NeXT runtime?

So far Apple's runtime is not released under GPL and is certainly not
copyrighted by FSF. As long as this remains true, there is no way Apple's
runtime can be distributed with GCC.

Now suppose this might change in the future, if Apple decides to assign the
copyright to FSF and release it under GPL. The two runtimes have different,
although similar, APIs, with different semantics as well. I would imagine that
initially at least the two runtime would be distributed together, however with
no code sharing between them. In the long run this might change, by having a
common implementation and API.

2) Is the GNU Objective-C front-end going to change in an incompatible way by
merging features from Apple's front-end?

I certainly hope this will not break existing code. As far as I'm aware there
are no major pending differences in the two front-ends which could break this
compatibility. The Objective-C++ compiler front-end is the biggest piece which
is missing from the GNU compiler, but I don't know what are Apple's plans with
it.

Stan, can you comment on this?

Regards,
Ovidiu

On Tue, 13 Mar 2001 21:19:35 +0100 (MET), Sven Koehler 
<sven.koehler@infopark.de> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> We have a lot of Objective-C code over here, which works fine
> with GCC 2.95.2.  Our concern is whether it will still work
> with the changes from Apple--is there a general policy on
> Objective-C legacy code?
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Sven Koehler
> 
> -- 
> Sven Koehler, sven.koehler@infopark.de
> Infopark AG   http://www.infopark.com
> http://www.infopark.com/
> Visit us at CeBIT: hall 6, booth F48!
> 
>