Matthew_Self@NEXT.COM (09/21/89)
In response to Steve Simmons' inquiry about an Objective-C front-end for GCC, NeXT will be making our modifications to GCC for Objective-C available very soon. Once GCC-1.36 is released (any day now), I will create a patch kit which will be announced on this mailing list. (The modifications are very small.) Whether and when this Objective-C support will be merged into the GCC release is, of course, up to Richard Stallman. The main issue which must be resolved before this is likely to occur is how to provide a run-time system for Objective-C. (The NeXT run-time system is not compatible with StepStone's run-time system.) NeXT hopes to distribute its Objective-C run-time system through the FSF, but some small modifications must be made first. The system currently relies on special features of the Mach-O object file format used on the NeXT computer. The run-time system will be distributed without restrictions on its use, so Objective-C programs can be freely linked with our run-time system. -- Matthew Self