Re: Restored Objective-C language support

[Matt Rice <ratmice at gmail dot com>]

On Wed, Sep 14, 2016 at 3:54 PM, Tom Tromey <tom@tromey.com> wrote:
>>>>>> "Giah" == Giah de Barag <gdb@crelg.com> writes:
>
> Giah> Patches are presented which restore objective-c language support.
> Giah> These patches are relative to the head of the gdb-7.11-branch.
>
> I didn't read the patches really, but I feel a bit responsible since I
> merged objc-exp.y into c-exp.y back in the day, and apparently not well.
>
> I think the most important thing to do to avoid future problems is make
> sure the objc tests are working.  The last time I looked at this, I
> think they weren't working properly at all.

I Agree, part of the problem is that during some "modernization" of
the objective-c runtime, the "Object" class, the root class that is
distributed with the runtime was neutered basically into
non-existence...

I didn't really manage to catch it before release, and gave up afterwords...

https://github.com/gnustep/libobjc2/blob/master/objc/Object.h
https://gcc.gnu.org/git/?p=gcc.git;a=blob;f=libobjc/objc/Object.h;h=f69f8139e8c0b0841e806f72747d09ca641dd2f8;hb=refs/heads/trunk

There used to be... methods, in particular there was a method called 'new'
which allowed one to actually allocate and instantiate an object in a
portable fashion.

given that there are about 50 different objective-c runtimes,
It seemed completely out of scope for the gdb testsuite...

I'm not sure what gcc and clang themselves are using to test i'd
imagine the c/runtime specific interface they provide... but it's a
bit inconvenient for a project like gdb that sits between gcc and
something external like gnustep (which provides its own mechanism for
instantiating objects).

> Also, it would be good to have new tests for the patches you wrote.
>
> Giah> Also, this is the first time I am doing something like this, so if
> Giah> I am neglecting any rule of communication of this list, please
> Giah> inform me, and I will correct it.
>
> Nothing wrong with your email but there are some contribution
> instructions for gdb:
>
>     https://sourceware.org/gdb/wiki/ContributionChecklist
>
> Tom