Re: Automated Reference Counting (Was: Disappointed by GNUstep)

[David Chisnall]

On 08/02/2022 12:40, Richard Frith-Macdonald wrote:
> > On 8 Feb 2022, at 11:01, David Chisnall<gnustep@theravensnest.org>  wrote:
> >    I could write significantly simpler code that ran faster using Objective-C++ 
> > and ARC than I could without either and GNUstep would not accept the less-buggy 
> > and faster option.  Refactoring code to make it less maintainable so that it 
> > could compile with an old compiler and spending time finding bugs that are 
> > impossible by construction with ARC felt like a complete waste of my time.
> Well that could be a bit misleading: while GNUstep policy has not accepted 
> breaking the portability of existing code it has never prohibited the addition 
> of new non-portable features (though obviously portable is preferred).

The granularity for enabling ARC is per compilation unit, which meant 
that it could be used for entirely new classes, but not for much else, 
and even then some of the private GNUstep headers are not ARC-safe (e.g. 
GSIMap.h) and so you'd end up with two completely segregated worlds 
within the same codebase.

David