All excellent feedback. Agreed on all points
On Thursday, September 12, 2013, David Chisnall wrote:
> On 11 Sep 2013, at 17:58, Gregory Casamento
> <greg.casame...@gmail.com<javascript:;>>
> wrote:
>
> > 2) I should have been more realistic in my goals on the kickstarter. We
> are, honestly around 10.3 in some APIs, 10.4 in others and 10.7 in others.
> An honest assessment of our states on a class by class, method by method
> level is what's really needed.
>
> I believe that 'compatibility with OS X 10.x' as a goal is fundamentally
> flawed, for three reasons:
>
> First, we're only claiming compatibility for a small number of frameworks.
> If an application needs QTKit or AVFoundation or whatever from one of
> these releases, we won't have it. The claim of '10.x compatibility' will
> be taken as meaning that any code that works on that version of OS X will
> work with GNUstep, and that's not feasible (even for 10.1, because code
> that old likely uses a load of Carbon cruft).
>
> Second, no applications actually use all of the APIs in a particular
> release. A better approach would be to find some open source OS X-only
> applications that only work with OS X 10.x or later and ensure that we have
> all of the APIs that they need. This gives the same PR benefits ('FooApp
> requires OS X 10.x, but runs fine on *BSD/Linux'), and means that the new
> APIs that we implement get immediate testing.
>
> Third, if we struggle and get full 10.6 compatibility for Foundation and
> AppKit, people will say 'but 10.6 is ancient, 10.9 is out now!' In spite
> of the fact that we may be supporting all of the commonly-used features
> from 10.7 and 10.8, if this is our bar then it means that we always appear
> to lag behind where we are.
>
> If we want WebKit (which we do!), then the first step would be to run some
> analysis on the WebKit code and see what CoreFoundation APIs it needs, and
> what methods on which Cocoa classes it uses. We should then produce a list
> of these, cross off the ones that are missing, and make 'implement these
> methods, which would allow WebKit to run on GNUstep' the goal. This is a
> concrete goal where people can reasonably assess how difficult it is (and
> therefore how much it would cost to implement). We could even assign a
> bounty to each function and method and pay it out once someone writes an
> implementation that passes code review.
>
> We should also approach companies like Omni Group and ask them if they can
> provide a list of APIs that they need to port their products, and if they
> would be willing to match funding. We could almost certainly provide them
> with an automated tool that they can run on their codebase that would give
> them a pretty clear idea of the OS X APIs that they use. Actually,
> providing such a tool with the ability to produce a report against the
> current version of GNUstep showing what is missing would be very helpful
> for a lot of projects. In some cases, it might be possible to meet half
> way and say 'well, this API isn't really core functionality, so we could
> make it optional, and if GNUstep provides these ones then we get a Linux
> port...'
>
> Other things I'd have liked to see on the Kickstarter list that are more
> achievable:
>
> - Finish Opal / CoreGraphics implementation
> - Provide an Android back end (using GLES and Cairo)
> - Ship an Android SDK
>
> David
>
> -- Sent from my Apple II
>
>
--
Gregory Casamento
Open Logic Corporation, Principal Consultant
yahoo/skype: greg_casamento, aol: gjcasa
(240)274-9630 (Cell)
http://www.gnustep.org
http://heronsperch.blogspot.com
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