Re: Objective-C standard

[Markus Hitter]

Am 03.06.2006 um 20:24 schrieb Andreas Höschler:

> IMHO people with some interest to check out a new language or API  
> need a defined platform to do so. OPENSTEP 4.2 was such a platform  
> for me in the old days. Install some CDs, read a few pages about  
> Objective-C and Foundation and have 'Hello World' running very  
> quickly.

Yup.


> There is no such defined platform based on GNUstep, that could be  
> installed with a doubleclick.

Well, I did some reseach and testing in the recent few weeks and  
found some projects actually trying to give us such a double-click- 
solution:


SimplyGNUstep <http://sourceforge.net/projects/simplygnustep/>

"A Linux/GNU distribution aimed at providing a user focused, OpenStep  
feeling, from bootup on." Defined Debian Sarge as it's preferred  
platform but wants to be compatible to others, too.

Sounds pretty good, but latest news from 2004-01-10, no file packages  
defined, couldn't find any documentation, "Homepage" is a dead link.


Backbone <http://www.nongnu.org/backbone/>

No preferred OS, no packages.


Étoilé <http://www.etoile-project.org>

Well, they're so overwhelmed by their great ideas they started to  
redefine GNUstep before ... 8-) ... surely not a click-click-solution.


GNUstep Live CD <http://linuks.mine.nu/gnustep/>

This one looks a lot like a insert-CD-and-start-coding solution. I  
pretty much have no idea why I didn't test this one yet, but had to  
ask for failure with Ubuntu and Gentoo instead.

It's downloadable, obviously working and obviously not too much  
bloated: it's a 440 MB download only.


> Right now GNUstep based software can only be sold as part of a  
> project that includes setting up an application server (installing  
> GNUstep from sources). As soon as we see GNUstep based commercial  
> (killer) applications (that can be used with any client device/os  
> thanks to SGD), we have market acceptance for Objective-C/GNUstep.

IMHO, you won't see commercial killer apps because right now it's  
impossible to deploy fully embedded applications. Setting up daemons  
and/or GNUstep extra files needs user interaction or even can't be  
done without root rights. All this in a century where Mac OS X  
developers get flamed because they ask publicly how to use an  
Installer at all. Starting off right where your app plunks down after  
download is the current state of the art.


Markus

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Dipl. Ing. Markus Hitter
http://www.jump-ing.de/