Re: Swift is now open source (Apache 2 License)

[Luboš Doležel]

On 12/03/2015 08:22 PM, Maxthon Chan wrote:
> On their side, I’m gonna go there and propose the option of using an
> existing Foundation reimplementation in place of the version they
> packed.

Over the time that I've been analyzing OS X, how things work deep down,
I came to the conclusion that developers at Apple must be *really* very
bored.

While on Linux, one can see the developers are lazy, strive for a clean
and simple design, Apple's developers probably dream about what crazy
complicated project of reimplementing something that has already been
done to start next.

A nice example are workqueues as used by GCD (libdispatch). They
implemented on top of a portable pthread pool. Then they thought, hey,
why don't we save us making maybe 1 system call, get the kernel
needlessly involved in managing the thread pool and feel absolutely
fantastic about it.

Another example. Pthread locking primitives. On Linux, there is a single
simple system call named futex. All the mutexes, conditions, r/w locks
etc. are built on top of that.
In Apple, they thought this would be way too simple. So instead, they
introduced a dozen of system calls (psynch_*) with gazillions of
parameters and very strange semantics. When I read through the
implementation in XNU, I wonder why did someone torture himself so much.

So when I see Apple redoing something, I'm just not surprised anymore.
These folks don't want easy and simple. Because then they would have
nothing to do and would get fired.

> On our side, maybe it is time to scrap our CoreBase and reimplement
> Base on top Apple’s CoreFoundation.

a) That's a lot of work someone would have to do. And to little benefit,
I'm afraid.
b) Makes you depend on APSL'd code.

I'd rather suggest that GNUstep finally moves to Git so that I can
contribute back more easily. Right now, it's easier for me to commit
into my own gnustep-corebase fork on GitHub then to commit into SVN,
wait for it to bubble to the Git mirror and merge it into the Darling fork.

-- 
Luboš Doležel