Re: [Pyobjc-dev] Revisiting the next release...

[Ronald O. <ous...@ci...>]

On Friday, Nov 1, 2002, at 06:33 Europe/Amsterdam, Stephen Steiner 
wrote:

> I'd answer the 'what do we need to do' by:
>
> First and foremost documenting the 'holes not to fall into'.  What 
> hasn't worked most often?  What is the solution to having fallen into 
> each of the holes?
This is a very good question, which I can't really answer. The holes I 
fall into tend to get filled pretty soon. The only 'hole' I know of 
right now is 'which python do I use to install PyObjC, and which one to 
actually run it'. If you use PB and have installed a custom Python 
(/usr/local/bin/python, /sw/bin/python .../) the two might not be the 
same if you use 'python setup.py install' to install PyObjC.

The only important bug is IMHO the automatic processing of 
retain/release/autorelease in combination with methods that transfer 
object ownership to the caller and in combination with 'init...' 
methods that just remove the object when initialisation fails (e.g. 
NSDictionary.initFromFile_)

Reference counting in the PyObjC implementation is also not 100% 
correct, I'm pretty sure that the Python refcounts of some objects are 
too high. I'll have to carefully check the code for this.

Some other work left for 1.0:
- Complete the work on Lib/objc/_convenience.py
   We're slowly adding more methods that make NS<Collection> classes act 
more
   like their Python counterparts, but this is not yet 100% complete (at 
least
   not the last time I looked at it)

- Complete the wrappers for constants and global functions in Cocoa
   Constants should be picked up automaticly, but someone should check 
that we
   really have all values. Some global variables that are currently 
added as
   constants might really be variable, if so special wrapper functions 
should
   be added. Not all functions in Cocoa are wrapped at the moment. Most 
of these
   require manual work (nothing complex, just more information than 
available to
   the generator script)
   For bonus points: The wrappers should also compile on OSX 10.1.
   For more bonus points: The generator script isn't very robust, and 
currently
   needs manual fixup of the output. Fix this, or replace by a better 
script.

- Complete custom wrappers for complex methods
   Some methods have pointer arguments or return pointers. If the pointer
   arguments are pass-by-reference arguments nothing has to be done, 
otherwise
   it is necessary to write custom method wrappers for the method.

- Maybe port to GNUstep
   I'd like to see a GNUstep port in the future, but IMHO this is not 
something
   that is really required for 1.0

Ronald