ObjC improvements and ObjC++

[Ziemowit Laski]

Ok, now that Stan has "set the stage", I will go ahead and create
an objc-improvements-branch (along with an 
objc-improvements-branchpoint)
first thing tomorrow, and start putting our local ObjC improvements 
there.
Concurrently, we can discuss how/when to integrate ObjC++ work.  My
current thinking is that, once the ObjC work proper is done and 
integrated
into the main line, we can simply reuse objc-improvements-branch for
ObjC++ engineering, but I'm open to other suggestions.

--Zem

On Monday, Jul 7, 2003, at 18:47 US/Pacific, Stan Shebs wrote:

> Now that Apple's developers are happily banging away on Panther
> and Xcode and GCC 3.3, we have an opportunity to get local work
> on Objective-C into FSF GCC 3.4, and to get started on Obj-C++
> as well.
>
> However, the local changes are lengthy and somewhat intertwined,
> and it seems like excessive makework to try to separate and patch
> them into the trunk one at a time; so I'd like to have a relatively
> short-lived objc-improvements-branch to stage the changes, test
> them away from Apple's other local changes and on other platforms,
> with GNUstep, etc, and then move them into the trunk en masse. 99%
> of the basic ObjC changes will be in gcc/objc; there are a couple
> to generic C frontend code, and one dubious change to calls.c that
> will need extra special attention.
>
> ObjC++ will be more complicated.  There is some generification
> needed to the objc/ code, and Zem will be working on new code
> needed to handle ObjC syntax in the recursive descent parser.
> We will also need to work up a spec of just exactly what ObjC++
> is expected to do; we have an empirical understanding that says
> "C++ and ObjC objects are mutually oblivious", and "plain ObjC
> (modulo C) and plain C++ code both work unchanged", but that
> needs to defined more precisely.  It's not clear at this point
> whether ObjC++ can make the 3.4 schedule, but we do have the
> cycles now and want to take maximum advantage of them while they
> exist.
>
> Stan
>
>
>
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