Windows development using Objective-C

Question

Having recently read up a on Objective-C it strikes me as a fairly neat language with plenty of cool features.

I have no intention of doing any iPhone development, however I understand that GCC is able to compile Objective-C code and so I wanted to know - Is Objective-C a viable alternative language to C99 for Windows development?

In particular:

• Is anyone currently doing Windows development using Objective-C?
• Are there any runtime components that would need to be distributed with my applications?
• I understand that Objective-C is a superset of C, does this mean that it is possible to use any C-compatible library? (for example the Windows API)
• Would I get garbage collection in my applications?
• I've found Cocotron and GNUstep which are often mentioned when talking about using Objective-C on other platforms, however as GCC can already be used to compile Objective-C I don't really understand why I would need these.
• Are there any other pitfalls or traps I might run in attempting Windows development using Objective-C?

Answer 1

With respect to your first question, I don't know if anyone is seriously doing development on windows with Objective-C, but there may be, though those numbers would probably be less than those doing serious work with a language like whitespace.

Secondly, you would need, at a minimum the objective-c runtime. There are two runtimes, NeXT's (now Apple's) runtime, and the GNU Objective-C runtime. They are not compatible. If you are on a non-NeXT and non-Apple platform, such as windows, you have no choice, GNU runtime only.

Objective-C is a superset of C, and yes you can use the Win32 API if you so desire directly in your objective-c code. As well, you would only get garbage collection if you use a conservative collector, and it ties in with the libraries you're using. In short: No.

What GCC has is support for the objective-c language, and runtime, no standard library. What the GNU objc runtime provides you with in terms of a standard library, is two objects: Object, and NXConstantString class, which is needed to support the @"" syntax. Object is merely a base class. Not very useful, eh? This is why frameworks like Cocotron and GNUstep exist — to give you access to an implementation of OPENSTEP/Cocoa.

Regarding pitfalls or traps, yeah: Your application, even using Cocotron or GNUstep may never be portable to the Mac for instance, or you may get bit by things like typed selectors in the GNU objc runtime, or a plethora of other problems. Let me finish answering this by posing another question: What pitfalls or traps might you run into targeting .NET? I'm sure some if not most of those apply in this case too. Standard pitfalls and traps apply.

I hope this helps.