mirror of
https://github.com/darlinghq/cctools-port.git
synced 2024-11-23 20:29:46 +00:00
65 lines
3.2 KiB
Groff
65 lines
3.2 KiB
Groff
GNUstep Objective-C Runtime 1.6
|
|
===============================
|
|
|
|
This is the seventh official release of the GNUstep Objective-C runtime (a.k.a.
|
|
libobjc2). This runtime was designed to support the features of Objective-C 2
|
|
for use with GNUstep and other Objective-C programs. Highlights of this
|
|
release include:
|
|
|
|
- Compatibility with the new runtime APIs introduced with Mac OS X 10.7 / iOS 5.
|
|
|
|
- Support for small objects (ones hidden inside a pointer). On 32-bit systems,
|
|
the runtime permits one small object class, on 64-bit systems it permits 4.
|
|
This is used by GNUstep for small NSNumber and NSString instances, and these
|
|
are used by LanguageKit for message sending to small integers.
|
|
|
|
- Support for prototype-style object orientation. You can now add methods, as
|
|
well as associated references, to individual objects, and clone them. The
|
|
runtime now supports everything required for the JavaScript object model,
|
|
including the ability to use blocks as methods on x86, x86-64 and ARM.
|
|
|
|
- Support for Apple-compatible objc_msgSend() functions for x86, x86-64, and
|
|
ARM. Using these approximately halves the cost of message sending operations
|
|
and results in a 10% smaller total binary size.
|
|
|
|
- A fully maintained POSIX Makefile to make bootstrapping builds and packaging
|
|
easier. This will be used automatically if GNUstep Make is not installed.
|
|
|
|
- Improvements to the included LLVM optimisation passes. Testing on a 2.8GHz
|
|
Xeon, a loop of 200,000,000 class messages took 0.8 seconds with all
|
|
optimisations enabled (including speculative inlining). With -Os, the test
|
|
took 2 seconds. With explicit IMP caching in the source code, the test took
|
|
1.2 seconds. For reference, the same test using the GCC Objective-C runtime
|
|
took 11 seconds (when compiled with either Clang/LLVM or GCC).
|
|
|
|
Various features of this release required some per-platform assembly code. For
|
|
the 1.6.0 release, ARM, x86 and x86-64 (with the SysV ABI, not with the Win64
|
|
ABI) are supported. Future releases in the 1.6.x series will extend this to
|
|
other architectures.
|
|
|
|
You may obtain the code for this release from subversion at the following
|
|
subversion branch:
|
|
|
|
svn://svn.gna.org/svn/gnustep/libs/libobjc2/1.6
|
|
|
|
Alternatively, a tarball is available from:
|
|
|
|
http://download.gna.org/gnustep/libobjc2-1.6.tar.bz2
|
|
|
|
The runtime library is responsible for implementing the core features of the
|
|
object model, as well as exposing introspection features to the user. The
|
|
GNUstep runtime implements Apple's Objective-C Runtime APIs, and a small number
|
|
of GCC APIs for legacy compatibility.
|
|
|
|
This library is based on the Étoilé Objective-C Runtime, an earlier research
|
|
prototype, and includes support for non-fragile instance variables,
|
|
type-dependent dispatch, and object planes. It is fully backwards compatible
|
|
with the FSF's GCC 4.2.1 Objective-C ABI and also implements a new ABI that is
|
|
supported by Clang and Étoilé's LanguageKit and is required for some of the
|
|
newer features.
|
|
|
|
Although the runtime has been tested by several people, and is being used
|
|
extensively by the Étoilé project, it is relatively new code and may still
|
|
contain bugs. If you come across any problems, please report them to the
|
|
GNUstep Developer mailing list <gnustep-dev@gnu.org>.
|