On 19/04/07, Alan DuBoff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Thu, 19 Apr 2007, Shawn Walker wrote:
> The major bit that seems missing to me is objective-c support for the
> Sun compiler suite. That's one area where gcc significantly excels...
Shawn,
I've always considered the fact that gcc has such broad cross platform
support to be a bigger advantage. The fact that you can cross-compile to
so many processors, has enabled it to be the choice for embedded work.
I have no experience with cross compiling, so I can't speak to that.
But is there a significant advantage to the extentions, and/or are those
extentions widely used? It seems fairly insignificant for the most part.
I've heard of some objective-c work being done at Apple, but that wouldn't
matter as Apple has not shared much of their sources to date, AFAIK.
Actually, Apple has shared much of their sources to date, since they
have been modifications to gcc and are required to. Those changes were
ported and integrated into gcc beginning sometime in 2002 if I'm not
mistaken.
Really, that's the main reason I miss objective-c. Research labs and
the like enjoy being able to have programs that can run on OS X and a
UNIX platform fairly easily thanks to GNUstep and objective-c. I've
been told by fellows work in these labs that it was trivial to compile
and have cocoa applications that worked on GNUstep and OS X.
I admit, beyond Mac/Cocoa/GNUstep I don't see much advantage to objective-c.
In my mind, having objective-c would be more for the "complete
platform" and "cool" factor than practicality.
I myself have no personal or business demand for using the language
other than wanting to use the Sun Studio compiler to build and package
GNUstep.
What do you consider to be the ones that would be attractive for
SunStudio? The tools folks are listening and trying to keep their finger
on the pulse of the community, so please let them know. They do attend and
present stuff at the SVOSUG, and next month will be doing a short presie
on a new tool which here is a blurb of...sounds interesting...
I think the main thing is that Sun Studio is almost capable of
completely providing everything you might find a typical Linux
distribution. objective-c is that remaining piece in my view, but I
would have to agree, given what I know about cross-compilation, that
cross-compilation would be far more important.
Personally, the Sun Studio compilers are the best I've ever used. I've
used Watcom's (High C++, etc.), Borland's (Turbo C/C++ days),
Microsoft's (Visual C++/Studio), GCC, and a few others that elude me
at the moment, but the best experience has been with Sun's.
These days I find Java more attractive simply because of the rapid
application development possibilities -- that and NetBeans + Matisse
kicks behind.
Admittedly, I spend most of my time writing perl code these days, not
by choice, but because my employer pays me quite handsomely to do so
:)
--
"Less is only more where more is no good." --Frank Lloyd Wright
Shawn Walker, Software and Systems Analyst
[EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://binarycrusader.blogspot.com/
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