Re: [gforth] iOS

[Bernd Paysan]

Am Mittwoch, 3. Februar 2016, 17:51:15 schrieb John Battle:
> Why doesn’t someone port gForth or some subset of it to iOS ?  I realize
> there is a “sort of” forth-like application called retro but it is a very
> poor version and to tell the truth, I can’t make it do much of anything
> useful. Worst of all, it does’t really execute statements on the fly the
> way it is advertised to do.  Obviously it is possible to write interpreters
> under iOS nowadays since there are many versions of python, not to mention
> J, out there for the taking.
> 
> A good forth needs to either have a specialized keyboard with some extra
> keys and some stack viewing functionality.

I use Hacker's keyboard on Android.  The third-party keyboard situation on iOS 
still seems to be dire, even though third-party keyboards are now allowed.

> I even tried carrying around a raspberry pi for my iPad so I could run
> forth, but that still doesn’t make up for the necessity of having to switch
> between numeric, character and special symbol keyboards all the time.

I already had success to compile Gforth on iOS as terminal program (runs on a 
jailbroken device with ssh), and will continue to work on that, but iOS is a 
low priority target.  I don't know if I can put Gforth in the App Store, as 
there are way too many restrictions (e.g. no JIT allowed, so gforth-fast in 
the default dynamic setting is not allowed), and sideloading probably means to 
build the entire Gforth yourself, which is maybe a too difficult task of the 
fans of iOS.

I'm also having problems creating libraries that XCode accepts, and I actually 
want to use GCC to compile the libraries, because clang has a severe 
performance problem with big functions, that makes compiling Gforth a pain in 
the ass (I already reported the bug and it is confirmed, but no solution in 
sight so far).  But I haven't found a cross-compiling GCC for iOS so far.  
Note also that iOS wants multiarch binaries, and Gforth wants to have 
different configuration files for different archs, so this all conflicts with 
the way Apple wants programs to be build.

-- 
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
net2o ID: kQusJzA;address@hidden(dQ*
http://bernd-paysan.de/