[swift-evolution] Proposal: Swift Open Source Project and Foundation replacements

[Gregory Casamento]

Additionally, GNUstep is a Nearly complete clone of cocoa that is well
tested and mature.   Building a Cocoa-inspired Swift implementation would,
quite honestly, miss the point entirely.

GC

On Thu, Dec 3, 2015 at 3:37 PM, Gregory Casamento <greg.casamento at gmail.com>
wrote:

> David,
>
> There wouldn't be any need to do it for every platform.   There is one
> objective-C runtime GNUstep uses for every platform it runs on.   So there
> is no need for it to be different.
>
> Reimplementing everything in pure swift is silly because it would not
> allow re-use of all of the objective-c that is out there which is one of
> the advantages of swift in the first place.
>
>
> GC
>
> On Thu, Dec 3, 2015 at 3:32 PM, David Hart <david at hartbit.com> wrote:
>
>> I also agree with Adrian. I would much prefer to see efforts put towards
>> implementing a pure Swift foundation API than supporting a Cocoa
>> implementation and bridge on every platform Swift will run on.
>>
>> On 03 Dec 2015, at 21:01, Gregory Casamento <greg.casamento at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Way ahead of you
>> On Thu, Dec 3, 2015 at 15:01 Maxthon Chan <xcvista at me.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Swift developers:
>>>
>>> Maybe you have never heard of it, but there have been several ongoing
>>> efforts, like GNUstep and Cocotron, at maintaining an open source
>>> Foundation reimplementation for alternative operating systems like Linux.
>>> It seemed to me that the current release of Swift did not put such efforts
>>> into consideration and brutally broke compatibility between Swift and
>>> Objective-C on Linux. I understand the fact that Apple is unwilling to
>>> release source code of Foundation, and this is usually where those
>>> alternative implementations comes into play.
>>>
>>> Some of such projects, like GNUstep, are mature enough to allow existing
>>> AppKit applications written in Objective-C, like TextEdit and Chess, to be
>>> ported from OS X to Linux and Windows without changing too much, if any,
>>> code, taking all modern Objective-C features like ARC and object
>>> subscripting with stride, with a compatible version of LLVM compiler.
>>> Meanwhile, with the current version of Swift, even if the Swift code is
>>> written with calls to Objective-C runtime assuming the case on OS X, it is
>>> broken under Linux even with libobjc linked in.
>>>
>>> I am here suggesting keeping the Objective-C bridge intact at least when
>>> built with a compatible version of libobjc (and GNUstep project have one
>>> already.) This will allow users of such alternative Foundation
>>> reimplementations to use their favourite Foundation distribution in place
>>> of the version provided by the Swift project, retaining the code
>>> compatibility already established between OS X and Linux by those Swift
>>> reimplementations.
>>>
>>> In such an environment the alternative Foundation implementation will
>>> provide their own version of CoreFoundation and Foundation, implemented
>>> using C and Objective-C, as well as a libobjc that supports ARC. The Swift
>>> environment would be built without its own CoreFoundation and Foundation,
>>> but linking against the provided version instead, bridging calls just like
>>> OS X version of Swift does. This will also allow the new Swift platform to
>>> take full advantage of the AppKit came with the alternative Foundation,
>>> allow porting full OS X apps to Linux a lot easier. The above also applies
>>> for porting iOS apps, if the alternative Foundation implementation also
>>> comes with their own UIKit.
>>>
>>> Max_______________________________________________
>>> Gnustep-dev mailing list
>>> Gnustep-dev at gnu.org
>>> https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnustep-dev
>>>
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>> https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Gregory Casamento
> GNUstep Lead Developer / OLC, Principal Consultant
> http://www.gnustep.org - http://heronsperch.blogspot.com
> http://ind.ie/phoenix/
>



-- 
Gregory Casamento
GNUstep Lead Developer / OLC, Principal Consultant
http://www.gnustep.org - http://heronsperch.blogspot.com
http://ind.ie/phoenix/
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