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.

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

Thanks,
Paolo

[1] http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=9931

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

On Tuesday, 11 March 2014 at 17:22:59 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> 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

Hi Jacob,

Actually I'm using [1], that's why I was wandering about eventual problems related to objc_msgSend_stret.
But I think that now the plan is to tryout [3]: that's the most logical solution after all...

- Paolo