Re: Kickstarter was not successful... but it did help things...

[Gregory Casamento]

This isn't precisely what I meant. Allow me to elaborate...

When I wrote the Xcode library for buildtool (see dev-libs and dev-apps) I wrote a meta-tool called plpcg (property list class parser generator). The purpose of plpcg is to parse the Xcode pbxproj file and, from that, generate objc classes which can then be used to deserialize the data.  The tool allowed me to, by using many example project files, get a full picture of how an Xcode file is structured and then allowed me to discern function in some cases and fill in behavior. 

The plpcg tool is used to progressively build up the Xcode library until it becomes complete.   Every time an unknown element is found in a project file plpcg.

What I was thinking about was a similar tool for analyzing the differences between GNUstep and different releases of the API. By parsing the headers of Cocoa and those of GNUstep into a set of data structures that can then be compared we can determine the gap between the current release of GNUstep and a given release of Cocoa.   The data generated from this tool could be used to generate skeletons for the missing classes as well.

I apologize for the vagueness of my previous post and I hope this more fully explains what I was thinking of. :)

Greg

On Friday, September 13, 2013, Luboš Doležel wrote:

Absolutely.  Allowing the code to compile and printing warnings when a missing method is called would be very helpful.

Dne 13. září 2013 2:01:01 Gregory Casamento napsal:

One of the ways I approached the Xcode library implementation (a library in GNUstep which interprets xcodeproj files and builds them) was to analyze what was missing and generate skeletons for those things that were not present.  I'm wondering if a similar approach might not be practical here as well.

On Thu, Sep 12, 2013 at 2:03 PM, Muhammad Hussein Nasrollahpour <address@hidden> wrote:

On Sep 12, 2013, at 10:52 AM, Doc O'Leary <address@hidden> wrote:

> In article <address@hidden>,
> Doug Simons <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>> On Sep 12, 2013, at 4:03 AM, David Chisnall wrote:
>>
>>> 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.
>>
>> If such a tool could be produced, I think it would be a tremendous asset for
>> GNUstep. I suspect there are plenty of developers of applications for OS X
>> who would be interested in porting to GNUstep but are put off by the daunting
>> task involved in making the effort, especially knowing that there are almost
>> certainly some things missing but not knowing how extensive those gaps might
>> be.
>
> I disagree.  What you want to do is engage developers as much as
> possible with as little effort as possible.  Don't give them a tool that
> has them holding GNUstep at arms length like a stinky diaper.  Instead,
> you have to make the porting effort less daunting from the get-go.  Or,
> rather, make the effort in line with the reward.  Like Graham said, many
> developers won't be bothered with even zero effort mainly, I think,
> because they expect zero reward.

Completely agree. We shouldn't engage developers in a lot of effort.


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--
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

--
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

-- 
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