RELEASE and co. macros

[Marko Mikulicic]

Hello,

I noticed that a lot of programs use the RELEASE, AUTORELEASE and RETAIN
macros.
Is this only for style or there is a reasion for it ?
(overriding the macro to disable ref counting mem and use boehm GC 
perhaps ?)

Has someone tried out Boehm GC with GNUstep ?

I'm a Smalltalker (converted to Self) but I like objc and *Step a lot.
I'm not feel too confortable with reference counting
(Once a student came to Moon...), it places a lot of overhead both
in memory, execution and programmer's time. I know objc inherits a lot
of troubles from C (you never know at runtime what is an object ptr and 
what not, unless placing typing restricions) but Hans Bohem made a nice 
conservative collector for c/cpp programs.
Since debugging memory related problems is so unpredictable I'm 
wondering if someone knows if there are some conficts in the gcc objc
runtime with Bohem's GC.

Marko