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