Re: Can this be ported to GNUstep?

[David Chisnall]

On 16 Jan 2009, at 08:09, Fred Kiefer wrote:

> We will need compiler support for all these ObjC 2.0 features and I am
> not sure for which we already have it, or expect to get it from an
> upcoming gcc release.

The latest versions of clang support declared properties.  This  
doesn't require any runtime support unless you also want @synthesize  
to create instance variables, and so it works on the GNU runtime with  
exactly the same behaviour as the legacy Apple runtime.

@synchronized, I believe, is parsed, but code generation is not yet  
implemented for the GNU runtime.  This is quite complex, since it  
relies on exception handling (@synchronized locks are released when  
the stack is unwound past them) which is still very work-in-progress.

Last time I tried compiling GNUstep with clang the failures were all  
to do with weird bits of GNU C used in GNUstep, rather than the  
Objective-C support, and it is already possible to use it for  
Objective-C programs that link against GNUstep, so it might be an  
option here soon.

David