[Gap-dev-discuss] Pantomime with CoreBase

[Sebastian Reitenbach]

Hi,

I was investigating a lot of the #if(n)def MACOSX in Pantomime and found that 
many (most) deal with CoreFoundation on the Mac.
Since GNUstep now has CoreBase, I thought about hey, it would be a good idea to 
reduce differences between Mac and 
GNUstep, in order to figure out, why GNUMail behaves differently on those 
systems.

So started with CWService.m, trying to use CoreBase but it failed immediately, 
since it uses CFSocket and CFRunLoop classes.
Those are not yet implemented in CoreBase 0.1. I contacted Stefan, and told him 
about this problem, and was asking 
about his TODO list, when this is planned to be implemented. He said, CFRunLoop 
is planned for 0.2 and CFSocket for 0.3, 
and he is actually working on CFRunLoop. But then in a second mail, he wrote, 
getting an important consumer for 
CoreBase like GNUMail, he may change the priorities and may implement the 
missing pieces first.

I waded through Pantomime, and really only found it using CFSocket and 
CFRunLoop, and in NSString+Extensions.m its using CFString.
Since CFString is implemented in CoreBase, I changed the #ifdef MACOSX there, 
and Pantomime happily compiled with 
CoreBase. 

Now, GNUMail starts up, but when I enter an IMAP folder, its now crashing :(
One bug I found I think, its just an off-by-one in a buffer, but another one 
seems to be lurking there.
I sent him my gdb output and the like, so hope he knows what's going wrong.

Anyways, i see some advantages for both, CoreBase and Pantomime/GNUMail, when 
GNUMail would make use 
of CoreBase:
 * CoreBase gets a real consumer, and Stefan gets feedback how things are 
working, keeping his motivation up ;)
 * Pantomime gets rid of a lot of #ifdefs hopefully making it easier for us to 
debug differences between GNUstep environment and MacOSX.

Are there any objections going that route?
I can send the patches that I have so far for review/testing. I.e. removing the 
#ifdefs in NSString+Extensions.m 
if there is interest.


cheers,
Sebastian