Objective C?

[Stan Shebs]

Corwin Light-Williams wrote:
> 
> On the other hand, I think it would be cool if ObjC was more reflective.
> I mean, it's in the same realm as smalltalk or java, but there are some
> things missing that I'd kind of like to see. Easy method lookup, for
> instance. I'd like to say [[self class] methods] and get a method
> dictionary, or whatever was appropriate. It seems like this sort of
> thing would be possible(although perhaps difficult) without clobbering
> the language as it stands. Then again, I probably have no idea what
> I'm talking about

Nobody is excluding the possibility of change.  There should probably be
some kind of language quasi-committee or interest group that would look
at proposed extensions.

> > > Apple is going to check in their changes to gcc and use gcc afterwards
> > > (until now Apple used to have their own, patched gcc compiler).
> > > Therefore any changes committed into gcc are likely to be implicitly
> > > used by Apple as well.
> >
> > Yes.  In fact the copyright assignment was sent to the FSF just today.
> 
> Cool. Very cool. Does this count everything that Apple's done with it?

Yup, plus future changes too.

> > > One of the most notably differences between GNU and NeXT/Apple gcc is,
> > > that the latter supports ObjC++, which is quite nice for integrating C++
> > > and ObjC code. It would be great to have that in the GNU gcc as well.
> >
> > ObjC++ is a sticky problem.  The language is not well-defined, and
> > its implementation involves a combination of hacks and cloning of the
> > C++ frontend.  The ObjC and C++ class hierarchies are actually
> > separate, which is, uh, "interesting".  I'd be astonished if our
> > poor overworked G++ maintainers wanted to try to support ObjC++ too.
> 
> But if someone wanted to champion that effort, it wouldn't be
> impossible? Is the Apple ObjC++ stuff counted in the aforementioned
> copyright assignment? I'd really like to see that functionality stay.
> If it needs to be cleaned up, fine. I'm more than willing to help out,
> although I'm probably not the ideal person for the job.

It's certainly not impossible, and yes, the ObjC++ frontend is being
assigned to the FSF as well, so the code could be patched in.  But don't
underestimate the difficulty of this task!  Even tho Apple has not been
promoting the use of ObjC++, there are people wanting to extend or
clarify the language definition in obscure areas.  There is literally
no written definition of what ObjC++ is, so there is a high potential
for confusion and disappointment.  I realize this all sounds like FUD,
but I'll be honest, I do fear ObjC++... :-)

Stan