Currently gnustep-base raises an exception if the retain count exceeds 24 bits. There's a comment there:
/* I've seen comments saying that some platforms only support up to * 24 bits in atomic locking, so raise an exception if we try to * go beyond 0xfffffe. */ Is this really true? On what platforms? 24 bits is really not a very big number. (It is causing me pain right now.) - lc