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Just curious, does this compile on MacOS?

by chasil 2y ago

ddalcino 2y ago
Maybe someone here can do it, but I can't. The Makefile tries to include something at `/usr/lib/nib/app.make`, and I don't have anything there. There are some clues at https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/444717/how-to-compile-the-original-first-world-wide-web-browser-nexus-by-tim-b-lee https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/444717/how-to-compi... but I'm not sure I'm willing to dive down that rabbit-hole.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- voidfunc 2y ago
  > but I'm not sure I'm willing to dive down that rabbit-hole. You know you wanna!
- ck45 2y ago
  That's "just" a makefile, which should be rather simple. The true challenge, apart from what was already mentioned as the probably incompatible API, the interface file itself, IB.nib, which is a serialization of the interface. Reading the file on latest macOS is still possible, but for deserialization it can't find some of the classes (e.g. StreamTable). If you want to dig deeper, try the NeXTStep 3.3 developer disc: https://archive.org/details/nextstep3-3dev https://archive.org/details/nextstep3-3dev
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
KerrAvon 2y ago
No. NeXTstep circa 1990 was very different from OpenStep in 1994. If this was OpenStep-based it would have a chance. NeXT often provided tools to migrate from one version of the frameworks to the next, so it might be possible to get it there, but it’d be a lot of work and a lot of manual massaging would likely still be required.
favorited 2y ago
Definitely not. It's old enough that `Object` is the base class, lots of functions use the old NX prefix (instead of NS), it predates the retain/release paradigm, etc. Getting it running wouldn't be an impossible task, because it's a pretty small project (~5k lines of Objective-C) and early 90s Objective-C is a pretty small language. But you'd need to shim all of the long-dead system APIs, or port the code to use their modern cousins.

Just curious, does this compile on MacOS?

by chasil 2y ago

Just curious, does this compile on MacOS?

Maybe someone here can do it, but I can't. The Makefile tries to include something at `/usr/lib/nib/app.make`, and I don't have anything there. There are some clues at https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/444717/how-to-compile-the-original-first-world-wide-web-browser-nexus-by-tim-b-lee https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/444717/how-to-compi... but I'm not sure I'm willing to dive down that rabbit-hole.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
voidfunc 2y ago
> but I'm not sure I'm willing to dive down that rabbit-hole. You know you wanna!
ck45 2y ago
That's "just" a makefile, which should be rather simple. The true challenge, apart from what was already mentioned as the probably incompatible API, the interface file itself, IB.nib, which is a serialization of the interface. Reading the file on latest macOS is still possible, but for deserialization it can't find some of the classes (e.g. StreamTable). If you want to dig deeper, try the NeXTStep 3.3 developer disc: https://archive.org/details/nextstep3-3dev https://archive.org/details/nextstep3-3dev
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

KerrAvon 2y ago

No. NeXTstep circa 1990 was very different from OpenStep in 1994. If this was OpenStep-based it would have a chance. NeXT often provided tools to migrate from one version of the frameworks to the next, so it might be possible to get it there, but it’d be a lot of work and a lot of manual massaging would likely still be required.

favorited 2y ago

Definitely not. It's old enough that `Object` is the base class, lots of functions use the old NX prefix (instead of NS), it predates the retain/release paradigm, etc. Getting it running wouldn't be an impossible task, because it's a pretty small project (~5k lines of Objective-C) and early 90s Objective-C is a pretty small language. But you'd need to shim all of the long-dead system APIs, or port the code to use their modern cousins.