Re: Which ObjC2.0 features are missing in the latest GCC?

[Johannes Brakensiek]

On 24 Nov 2019, at 14:16, Yavor Doganov wrote:

> Packaging libraries and development tools just because they are cool
> and it is expected that hordes of developers will write useful
> programs that utilize them is not a useful activity -- you have to
> justify their inclusion in the distro and a hypothetical future
> benefit is not a good argument.

Well, I think different about this (otherwise Apple f.e. would never 
have shipped any new software I think), but we can agree to disagree 
here.

> > If you don’t provide new tools for developers they are not going to
> > build new software for their users. It’s this way around not the
> > other and it’s no dilemma at all.
>
>
> So you are basically saying that just because Debian does not provide
> the right tools there is no software written yet?  Sorry to say that
> but it's a ridiculous statement.

Well, I’m ok with that. They call me Mr. Ridiculous at times. And of 
course it is not because of Debian. It is a GNUstep and 
distribution/packaging thing.

Let me just tell you some things I did and let’s see what sounds that 
ridiculous to you:

Under Debian I typed apt-get install kdevelop and was provided a nice 
IDE and quite up-to-date tools to write and compile KDE/Qt software.

Somewhat later I typed apt-get install gnome-builder and I was provided 
a quite nice IDE and quite up-to-date tools to write and compile 
Gnome/GTK+ software.

I also typed apt-get install gnustep-devel and I was provided an IDE 
that looked like it jumped out of the 90s. I thought: Oh, not that bad, 
I can use Xcode and compile then. But I could not because the tools 
installed were not able to compile f.e. Rik.theme or .m files using 
recent language features.

I still liked the idea of GNUstep and luckily there were some nice 
people like Andreas Fink and Patryk Laurent who provided me their build 
instructions and scripts to help me building the new runtime. As a 
newbie it took me several weeks of my spare time and some mails to get a 
working build environment before I could start with developing at all. 
There were no public available build instructions or build scripts for 
Debian that worked at that time (I changed that).

Later this year I recognized that a working build environment is of no 
use at all if nobody is distributing that environment to my users. That 
was when I decided to leave Debian und use Ubuntu, because for users it 
would be way easier to install a PPA (that I could create) than to add 
an extra deb repository. Luckily some work was already done on 
https://launchpad.net/gnustep by Thomas Karl Pietrowski.

So, please tell me which part of this story sounds most ridiculous to 
you?


> > For me this cause is indeed a decision whether you are most
> > comfortable with the state in which GNUstep currently is or if you
> > would be more comfortable when it would develop to a further state,
> > maybe one where most ObjC currently is. If you want it to develop the
> > decision should be simple.
>
>
> This is a bogus argument, GNUstep supports these new features and
> developers who want to use them can do so.  Debian cannot stop them.

That’s true. It takes some efforts though. I think that’s a pity.

> > - https://github.com/64characters/Telephone
> > - https://github.com/subethaedit/SubEthaEdit
> > - http://colloquy.info/
> > - https://github.com/rburgst/time-tracker-mac
>
>
> Are these projects directly buildable/runnable with GNUstep configured
> for Clang and the modern runtime?  I doubt it.

No, of course they are not. But they could some day if the GNUstep 
project would decide and be able to develop some way further. That’s 
my point.

Johannes