
Etoile: a GNUStep-based Linux GUI written in Objective-C - adamnemecek
http://etoileos.com/etoile/
======
ewasylishen
I'm involved with Étoilé, and am the lead developer on a framework called
CoreObject
([https://github.com/etoile/CoreObject](https://github.com/etoile/CoreObject))
- it's an object persistence framework something like CoreData except it's
also a DVCS.

We're going to properly launch a website for it and do an alpha release in a
few weeks, but thought I would mention it since this is where most of the
development on Étoilé is happening right now.

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girvo
I came across Etoile a few weeks back, posted it in a comment here. Glad to
see others have run across it!

For those that think it's a dead project, it's not, check the mailing list.
The devs are looking to move to GitHub, so hopefully we'll see more
contributors. I'm going to get involved myself, I downloaded the source last
night into a VM to have a fiddle :)

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networked
How viable nowadays is cross-platform application or server software
development in Objective-C compared to the same in C++? GNUstep appears to be
the best (only) solution for the former; is that so?

Edit: To clarify, I'm asking this as a developer who does most work on Linux.
My interest in Obj-C is primarily due to its Smalltalk-like message passing
mechanism. Edit 2: clarity.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
There's Apportable for Android
([http://www.apportable.com](http://www.apportable.com)), which—I'm
guessing—likely uses Cocotron under the hood:
[http://www.cocotron.org](http://www.cocotron.org)

But, in general, not very. Objective-C compilers certainly exist for Windows
and Linux, but aren't worth much without Apple's frameworks.

~~~
conradev
Apportable does use Cocotron, but they also stitch in various other open
source libraries that are found in the iOS runtime (libdispatch, CommonCrypto,
etc):

[http://www.apportable.com/open_source](http://www.apportable.com/open_source)

~~~
aaronbrethorst
interesting, thanks for the link!

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stesch
When I switched from AmigaOS to Linux in 1995, I expected GNUstep to be ready
within a short time after it.

Those were the days …

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robert-wallis
Apple has a patent on the Dock.
[https://www.google.com/patents/US7434177](https://www.google.com/patents/US7434177)

And clickable pull-down menus in the menu bar.
[https://www.google.com/patents/USD629412](https://www.google.com/patents/USD629412)

The legal system strikes again.

~~~
throwawaykf03
The Dock patent is specifically on the dynamic resizing and repositioning of
icons when moused over. A plain collection of icons won't infringe this
patent.

The second patent is a design patent, which means you'd have to have a menu
exactly like that to infringe.

Funnily enough, one of the icons in the figures in the first patent is for
Internet Explorer. I think I also spied one for Word.

~~~
rsynnott
It's from 1999; at that time, Apple shipped IE.

~~~
throwawaykf03
Yep, just seems funny today.

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throwawaykf03
I messed around with GNUstep on Ubuntu around 2011-ish when I tried to port an
OS X service to Linux. (I did not touch Etoile, though, as I didn't need a
GUI.) I didn't come away with a good impression at all.

It was not very easy to get up and running, the documentation was lacking,
requiring digging through many mailing lists, and it didn't support
Objective-C 2.0... which was a big pain since the code was in Objective-C 2.0.
Some of the libraries didn't even compile, for which I submitted a patch or
two that never got accepted. When I finally got the app to compile, it was
rather slow, so I abandoned further work.

Looking at the wiki, it apparently still does not properly support Objective C
2.0, and does not even mention plans for things like ARC. I don't think it'll
see any adoption until they bring it closer to modern Objective-C style
development.

~~~
0x09
The GNUstep Objective-C runtime actually supported ARC before Apple even
shipped their implementation:
[http://etoileos.com/news/archive/2011/07/03/1215/](http://etoileos.com/news/archive/2011/07/03/1215/)

~~~
throwawaykf03
Hmm, they really should update their wiki, I cannot find a mention of ARC on
[http://wiki.gnustep.org](http://wiki.gnustep.org).

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flym4n
It says 'PDA' in the first paragraph. That makes it looks old

~~~
Blahah
It _is_ old. The page is copyright 2010, and the last news post was mid 2012.

~~~
616c
But the last code edit was 11 hours ago. Web page is not so important to me.

[http://svn.gna.org/viewcvs/etoile/](http://svn.gna.org/viewcvs/etoile/)

~~~
chris_wot
Argh! Svn!

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rjzzleep
yeah it's old. personally i'm wondering how complicated it would be to have a
transparent wineish layer for running mac binaries on linux. the kernel
modules are i guess the biggest problem, but last i remember they were fairly
heavily based on their freebsd counterparts(well, at least many years ago)

i wish vmware workstation in linux was as good as the mac and windows
counterparts ... then i could just run linux as my main os on my mba again

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Sanddancer
The biggest problem would be the binary loader. OS X uses the Mach-O
executable format, as opposed to the ELF format used in other unixes. There is
a project to get Mach-O binaries to be usable under other unixes,, but it
looks to be a ways off still --
[http://darling.dolezel.info/en/Darling](http://darling.dolezel.info/en/Darling)

~~~
adamnemecek
I really don't think that a binary loader would be that big of an issue.
Unless I'm missing something, I would say that it would be one of the easier
things. I'd guess that implementing all the frameworks would be the worst
part.

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james2vegas
Doesn't appear to be Linux only at all.

