Re: Distributed Objects overkill?
Re: Distributed Objects overkill?
- Subject: Re: Distributed Objects overkill?
- From: Wade Tregaskis <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 21:27:04 +1100
So if I write a Rendezvous app built around distributed objects, and
later decide to port it to Windows, or Unix, or Linux, or some other
platform; would my job be incredibly harder than had I used BSD
sockets and so forth, or would my task be equally difficult? Would it
involve changing both the mac version and writing a windows version,
or simply moving to the gnustep implementations of DO and then writing
the windows version. I'd just like to keep my options open and know
that moving to windows would not require a complete rewrite on both
sides.
Well, one true 'limitation' of using Distributed Objects is that it's
not much use without Objective-C. So you'll have to write at least
parts of your Linux & Windows versions in Objective-C. This may not be
an issue for you, but I'm not sure what the level of support is for
ObjC on Windows - Linux you'll be using gcc as you do on MacOS X, so
you'll have no problems.
It sounds like you're pretty strongly edging towards a cross-platform
program. If so, then to be honest I myself would probably look at
using TCP directly via my own protocol (probably using NetSocket or a
similar class on the Mac side), simply because I don't think many
people have played around with Distributed Objects across platforms,
and so there could be some hazy & unexplored areas. It's a calculated
risk, essentially.
The main fear I have with DO across platforms is the endian issues.
You'll still have to deal with these, however, if you use sockets, so
really you may actually be better of with DO on that point - the
GnuStep implementation may have solved the endian issues already.
The worst case scenario if you do use DO is that you'll have to rewrite
your DO-reliant objects so that they send messages via a socket class
directly, rather than using DO. For 'normal' uses, that's not actually
that hard. But then that'll break backwards compatibility with your
existing DO version.
Wade Tregaskis
-- Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
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