Re: porting apps from NextStep to Cocoa
Re: porting apps from NextStep to Cocoa
- Subject: Re: porting apps from NextStep to Cocoa
- From: Mike Ferris <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 7 Jan 2003 08:41:09 -0800
If you have hardware that can run NeXTStep 4.2, that's probably the
easiest. Port to OpenStep using a 4.2 box. Then going to Cocoa from
there is mostly a recompile (and possibly changes to take advantage
of new stuff if you want).
Having just gone through this, I would have to disagree. Finding
hardware that works with OpenStep is tough, and the hardware you do
find is going to be limited and have poor performance, making your job
as a developer tougher. If I was going to do a port today, I would
go straight from NeXTSTEP for OSX, using OpenStep only for the nib
conversion. Others have mentioned getting OpenStep running on VPC and
VMWARE, and even if it is 640x480 2 bit gray, it's good endough to do
the one part that I think can only be done on OpenStep, and that is
the nib conversion.
Also, the tools are full of bugs. Another developer on this project
asked "How come project builder crashes when I press arrow keys, and
how can I stop it from happening" Answer: Don't press arrow keys.
Doing a find will crash if you click before it is done, windows end up
frozen and don't flush to screen. I don't expect fixes anytime soon > :-)
The whole thing is painful, when you compare it to working on OSX.
The underlying conversion tool (tops) is still shipped with OS X (and
is a cool little code transformation tool). But the NextStep ->
OpenStep conversion scripts and all the intermediate header files are
not shipped.
If you do the all out 6 stage conversion, you don't need the header
files, only the conversions scripts and the shell/utility scripts to
make it work.
Truth be told, I would probably go this route too. I think it kind of
depends how expert you are in NeXTStep and OpenStep and the
differences. For folks not already pretty familiar with it all, doing
all conversions in one step might be a bit overwhelming. The question
is whether it is worth the effort to get an OpenStep box so you can do
it one step at a time.
It might be possible to simply grab all that stuff from an OpenStep
box and throw it onto OS X, but you'll almost certainly have to do
some creative changes to the instructions for porting, especially
when it comes to the dev env aspects.
I took a break from working on Java stuff today to look into this for
mere amusement / change of pace.
[snip]
Well, all this data should make it considerably easier for anyone that
wants to run this stuff on OS X. Very cool.
Mike
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