D/Objective-C: hit a dead end, start anew

[Michel Fortin]

On 2010-09-17 10:06:27 -0400, Jacob Carlborg <doob at me.com> said:

> Have you thought about what needs to be modified/added yet? Is it 
> basically better support for runtime reflection?

Basically I'm adding the necessary pieces so that DMD can generate 
object files containing the exact same things an the Objective-C 
compiler would generate. I am also adding the few necessary syntactic 
additions to support this. The end result should be as efficient as the 
Objective-C compiler itself.

One thing I am *not* doing is adding the alien Objective-C syntax to D. 
Declaring an Objective-C class will look like this:

	extern (Objective-C)
	class NSObject {
		NSString description() @property;
		void perform(SEL selector, NSObject object) [performSelector:withObject:];
	}

and for the most part should be semantically equivalent to a regular D 
class. The only cases where I'm adding to the syntax are those where 
special things need to be expressed, such as the Objective-C selector 
when necessary for one of the two methods above.

Most of the work is being done in the glue code that links the frontend 
to the backend. I'm trying to not affect the semantics of any D 
construct, simply binding them to the Objective-C runtime where 
appropriate.

-- 
Michel Fortin
michel.fortin at michelf.com
http://michelf.com/