Re: Next stable release?

[David Ayers]

Richard Frith-Macdonald schrieb:
> 
> On 10 Jun 2008, at 15:28, David Ayers wrote:
> 
>> Richard Frith-Macdonald schrieb:
>>
>>> Where we have methods which are GNUstep specific, they ought to be in
>>> If you have a better idea of how to go about this sort of thing I'm very
>>> willing to listen (even time consuming alternatives if you want to
>>> volunteer to help out).  I just don't want inaction to perpetuate the
>>> situation where people complain about lack of Apple compatibility.
>>
>> Well I think the correct solution would be to use the version macros to
>> hide the declarations in the Foundation/*h headers yet to re-declare
>> them unconditionally in a corresponding GNUstepAdditions/*.h header.
> 
> Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you ... but if you do that, then all
> existing source code would fail to compile because declarations would
> not be visible in the headers they are including now, but they wouldnt
> be including the new header they need.

I thought that this commit ...
http://svn.gna.org/viewcvs/gnustep/libs/base/trunk/Headers/Foundation/NSString.h?rev=26621&view=diff&r1=26621&r2=26620&p1=libs/base/trunk/Headers/Foundation/NSString.h&p2=/libs/base/trunk/Headers/Foundation/NSString.h
[http://tinyurl.com/3j3ysu]
... already breaks existing source code.  But without providing an
alternative header to include.  But in fact it seems that many of those
declarations already exist in GSCategories.h.  Sorry I should have
checked earlier.  [Yet there are some declarations that are not there...
not sure what should happen to them (maybe this is only true for
-immutableProxy]

So what I'm trying to say, is that we should insure that all those
methods are declared in GSCategories.h without the version macros.  And
maybe add a comment in the Foundation files to indicate where these
declarations have moved to.

> I want current code to continue to compile and work with no changes, but
> to warn developers that things are going to change before the next
> stable release.

Well if someone is using version macros now, they'll notice that the
declarations are hidden.  If not, I suppose they can't get warned with
the current infrastructure.  They'll notice once the declarations are
removed from the file which should probably still contain a general
comment about where declarations have been moved to.

>> [I'm currently not sure whether GSCategories.h is currently includable
>> by applications using GNUstep proper.]
> 
> It is, and it's where I would expect most method declarations to move to
> eventually

ACK.  Sorry for the confusion.

Cheers,
David