Re: import vs include Re: Porting autogsdoc to OSX

[Nicola Pero]

> > To the specific problem: gstep-base may or may not use #import 
> > internally, but gs-autodoc should use #import because otherwise it's 
> > not OpenStep conform and therefore not portable. OpenStep requires 
> > #import and doesn't require safe-guarded headers.

This is just not so.

The OpenStep specification makes *no* statement to whether #include or
#import should be used.

If you count the original NeXTstep ObjC book as part of the specification,
then the book says that #import is preferred in the NeXTstep code
examples, not that it's compulsory.

I don't consider that a particular authoritative nor brilliant suggestion
anyway.

#import is by no means required as part of Objective-C, I consider it a
GCC extension to C, which is only turned on when you use Objective-C - and
that because GCC C hackers don't want it on C/C++ since they consider it
badly defined, and it's used in Objective-C because legacy code is using
it and so it can't be easily removed.

I don't think we should be that much religious about the past as to go on
using totally deprecated extensions to GCC just because at a certain point
in the past at NeXTstep they were using those extensions before they were
deprecated.

Particularly if we are writing *new* code.  I can understand legacy code
from the past - but why writing new code using GCC C extensions which are
deprecated without hope and which nobody else in the world is using ?

I have this impression that people are using #import without even knowing
that it is seriously deprecated.  This is probably gnustep-make's fault
which is automatically adding -Wno-import to the gcc command line, and
Apple's fault which is modifying GCC before they ship it turning the
warning off by default.

Perhaps we should add a configuration flag to gnustep-make.

./configure --enable-Wno-import

will turn on automatically adding -Wno-import to the command line (turning
off the #import warnings).  Otherwise, by default it won't be added, and
everyone will know - when they use #import - that their GCC seriously
doesn't agree with that.