Objective-C runtime: bindings are possible?

[Jacob Carlborg]

On 2014-03-11 16:12, Paolo Invernizzi wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm wondering if it is possible to directly interface with the
> objective-c runtime, as I've read [1] and I have some random crashes in
> my code right now.

Yes, it's possible since the Objective-C runtime is plain C functions. 
You need to show us some code to be able to help you.

> Someone can share some experience? I'm on 10.9...

To interface with Objective-C there are three options:

* Use the Objective-C runtime functions directly [1]
  + Works now, no language or library support is needed
  - Cumbersome
  - Verbose
  - Easy to make mistakes

* Use an Objective-C/D bridge [2]
  + Fairly simple to use
  - Bloat, both template and virtual method bloat. We're talking 60MB 
Hello World

* Extend the language to be ABI compatible [3, 4]
  + The compiler outputs the same code as the Objective-C compiler would
  + Easy to use (or as easy as using Objective-C would be, sometimes easier)
  - Requires language support

I tried all of these options and personally I think the third options is 
the best. As of a coincident I just finished (except for exceptions) 
porting D/Objective-C to 64bit.

[1] 
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Cocoa/Reference/ObjCRuntimeRef/Reference/reference.html

[2] http://www.dsource.org/projects/dstep
[3] http://wiki.dlang.org/DIP43
[4] https://github.com/jacob-carlborg/dmd/tree/d-objc

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg