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https://github.com/helje5/libfoundation

An Objective-C Foundation library
https://github.com/helje5/libfoundation

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An Objective-C Foundation library

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README 

        
libFoundation Library README

============================



History

=======



    This library is derived from an old library we designed, wrote and

    used for developing a commercial application during 1995.



    That time we needed a small library that had some general

    containers and strong support for distributed objects. We needed

    to write code that runs on different machines, not only on NeXT.



    Also we needed to write programs that communicate via general Unix

    IPC channels. So we designed a library that had support for

    distributed objects on different channels of communication like

    Internet or Unix domain stream sockets or socketpairs.



    We also experimented some ideas, such as calling the exception

    handlers as functions and returning from them, choosing the best

    communication channel when a connection is established and some

    other interesting ideas.



The design of the library

=========================



    We have followed two important points in designing this

    library. The first is runtime independence. The second is to write

    the code without using extensions to the OpenStep spec, or if we

    are using such extensions, we provide a separate library

    containing them that allows porting of the code written for

    libFoundation to another implementation of Foundation.



    We wanted to give people a library that compiles and runs in the

    both worlds of Objective-C: NeXT and GNU. This will allow one to

    write programs that mix together the code that exists for NeXT and

    the code that runs only on the GNU runtime. libFoundation compiles

    with both runtimes using different compilers. If all the other

    GNUstep work would be done to allow easy porting of programs, then

    one can move easily from NeXT's OpenStep to GNUstep.



    The library includes a header file that allows you to write the

    programs portable across runtimes. If you write the programs using

    only the GNU API without some GNU runtime dependent facilities

    your programs will also run without modifications on both GNU and

    NeXT runtime.



    The actual extensions are the exception handling mechanism and the

    garbage collector based on reference counting. The exception

    handling mechanism offers a better approach to exception handling

    than that found in the OpenStep specification by using a more

    intuitive syntax. In addition the exception handler is invoked as

    a function so you can see in debugger where the exception was

    generated from.



    The garbage collector works in conjunction with the reference

    counting mechanism and releases you from thinking on how to solve

    the cycles in your program, thus saving time and code to write and

    maintain.



    For all these extensions we provide a separate library that

    compiles with other implementations of Foundation.



    Starting with version 0.9.0 support for Boehm's garbage collector

    has been added; see



	http://reality.sgi.com/employees/boehm_mti/



    for more information on this collector. The support in

    libFoundation includes the possibility of registering an object

    for the finalization of another object, which is very important

    for the implementation of classes like NSNotificationCenter in

    libFoundation and EOObjectUniquer in GDL. See the documentation

    for more details about this facitity.



The current status

==================



    Almost all of the classes from the original OpenStep specification

    are implemented. We also implemented several classes found in the

    NeXT's OPENSTEP implementation like NSFileManager, NSFileHandle,

    NSTask and NSPipe. We estimate the library is completed in

    proportion of 80% from the original OpenStep specification;

    extensions are not counted.



    Almost all of the classes are thoroughly tested using a special

    testing framework we designed.



Future work

===========



    Starting with 0.8.0 libFoundation was made thread-safe. More

    testing should be done: we need to come up with some automated

    tests for checking the thread-safety of the library.



    At this time libFoundation does not provide an implementation of

    Distributed Objects (DO) and Unicode strings.



    A small implementation for DO was written by Helge Hess and it

    will eventually become part of libFoundation. This implementation

    will be further worked on to be based upon the Corba's IIOP, which

    will allow libFoundation's Distributed Objects clients to

    communicate directly with Corba clients written in other

    languages, that run using a variety of Corba implementations.



    Mircea wrote most of the Unicode implementation but we still need

    to come up with some good algorithms for searching Unicode

    strings.



Resources

=========



    Snapshots/releases of libFoundation will usually become available in

    the contrib directory of the GNUstep site (ftp.gnustep.org).

    There is also a web page on



    http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Monitor/7464/libFoundation/index.html



Remote access to the sources through CVS

========================================



    You can have read-only access to the most recent developments on 

    libFoundation using anonymous CVS. To be able to do this setup the 

    CVSROOT environment variable like this (a Bourne shell is assumed): 



      CVSROOT=:pserver:[email protected]:/libFoundation

      export CVSROOT



    Then do a 'cvs login'. You will be prompted to introduce a password, 

    enter anoncvs.



    Then issue this command to get the sources: 



      cvs -z 3 checkout libFoundation



    Once you have the sources checked out you can update them to the 

    recent changes by running inside of libFoundation source tree: 



      cvs -z 3 update



GNUstep makefile package (gstep-make)

=====================================



    GNUstep includes a makefile package, called gstep-make, which is

    supported by the libFoundation. The package is available at the

    GNUstep site (ftp.gnustep.org).

    Take a look at the libFoundation INSTALL file on how to compile

    lF using gstep-make.



Ports

=====



    This package was compiled and tested on these machines:



    m68k-next-nextstep3



	The package was compiled and tested successfully using the

	2.6.3 and 2.7.2 versions of compiler and with both NeXT and

	GNU runtimes.  Returning of aggregates of all sizes works well

	with both runtimes.



    i386-next-nextstep3



	The package was compiled and tested successfully using the

	2.6.3 and 2.7.2 versions of compiler and with both NeXT and

	GNU runtimes.  Returning of aggregates of all sizes works well

	with both runtimes.



    i386-next-nextstep4



	The package was compiled and tested successfully using the

	2.7.2.1 version of compiler with GNU runtime. The port of GNU

	compiler on this machine does not work with nested functions

	so parts of exception handling facility don't work.



    i386-pc-linux-gnu



	The package was compiled on linux with ELF using the 2.7.2.1,

	with GCC 2.8.1 and with EGCS 1.0.3. All the tests ran

	successfully, except some NSInvocation tests that crash when

	returning some structures.



    i386-pc-cygwin32



	The package was compiled using the Cygnus Win32 beta 17.1

	binaries, with the libobjc.a built from the newer gcc sources

	with the 960906 runtime patch applied.



    i386-pc-mingw32



        The port to mingw32 is currently in progress. See README.mingw32 

        for information. The package is cross-compiled using egcs 1.1.1.



    i386-sun-solaris2.5.1



	The package was compiled with the 2.7.2.1 compiler with the

	970317 runtime patch applied.



    sparc-sun-solaris2.5



	The package was compiled with the 2.7.2.1 compiler with the

	960906 runtime patch applied.

        See README.sparc for more information.



    sparc-sun-solaris2.6



	The package was compiled with a modified egcs 1.1.1 compiler.

        See README.sparc for more information.



    alpha-unknown-linux-gnu



	The package was compiled using a pre-release of GCC version

	2.8. Still needs some work to finish the NSInvocation and

	NSMethodSignature machine dependent macros.



    powerpc-ibm-aix4.1.5.0



	The package was compiled using the EGCS 1.0.3a compiler with a

	patch applied to it; the patch can be found in the

	libFoundation's distribution. NSInvocation and

	NSMethodSignature have been ported.

    

    Some preliminary work has been done on HPUX 9. This platform is

    obsolete and we'll try to port the library to 10.20 and 11.0.



    Happy hacking,



    Ovidiu Predescu 

    Mircea Oancea   

    Helge Hess      



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