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Does this exist because someone wanted an open source version of the Cocoa apis that isn't GPL'd? Otherwise, I don't understand why they wouldn't just direct th
by spooneybarger 16y ago
Does this exist because someone wanted an open source version of the Cocoa apis that isn't GPL'd? Otherwise, I don't understand why they wouldn't just direct their energies into GNUStep.
- pavlov 16y agoThe aims of the projects are quite different. Cocotron is designed purely as a porting toolchain, whereas GNUstep provides a complete IDE and many other cross-platform components. This difference in philosophy becomes evident in some practical ways: * Cocotron is designed for integration as a cross-compiler within Xcode. You can literally copy your Mac app or framework target and retarget it to Windows or Linux with a few clicks in Xcode. (GNUstep also does cross-compilers in theory, but integrating with Apple's IDE is not their prime focus because GNUstep traditionally has had its own Next-derived dev environment.) * Cocotron has a minimum of dependencies and tries to be very lightweight. Its Foundation and AppKit DLLs are just a few megabytes. * Cocotron aims for a platform-native look, at least as far as possible within the constraints of Mac OS X resource and code compatibility. * Cocotron's stated goal is Cocoa compatibility. It does not have its own public API extensions, unlike GNUstep.