[libdispatch-dev] Solaris portability

[Joakim Johansson]

On 7 nov 2009, at 04.12, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:
>
> Well, let's see what Paolo's's patches for separating out the kqueue  
> dependent bits look like first.  I could see a version of reality in  
> which "core sources" (that is to say, not clearly OS-specific ones,  
> like MacOSX's DISPATCH_SOURCE_TYPE_MACH_* sources) which weren't  
> wired up underneath simply wouldn't fire, e.g. your "cross-platform  
> GCD code" compiles just fine on a new dispatch-supporting platform,  
> but some of the sources are stubbed out underneath.  You can  
> register for such a source all day long, but you'll never have one  
> fire.

That is really what I envisioned, I would definitely see significant  
value in that from a pragmatic viewpoint. Looking forward to see  
Paolo's patches.

>>> That would have a chilling effect on application adoption since  
>>> they could no longer assume what "API compatibility" meant on any  
>>> given platform.
>>
>> Well, it kind of reminds me of POSIX support over the years on many  
>> platforms... :-)
>
> I'm not sure if you're trying to support my point or your point  
> there. :-)

I guess you can take your pick really ;-)

It was just a little bit tongue-in-cheek after having done a few shims  
over the years, mostly for NeXTSTEP and early versions of Mac OS X :-)

As a sidenote, I'm really happy with the huge progress that was made  
the last few years on OS X in this area, it definitely makes life  
easier.

>
>> Fair enough, although blocks may not be possible if building with  
>> e.g. the Sun Studio compiler (which I hope we'll eventually being  
>> able to build with...)
>
> Well, I can see how targeting the Sun Studio compiler might impose  
> some additional pre-processing, yes.  The clang project, assuming  
> you can build LLVM/clang reasonably well on Solaris (I haven't  
> tried), provides a rewriter, for example, which just makes the  
> blocks compiler runtime a (normal) library dependency.

Aha, that sounds extremely interesting, will definitely have a look at  
that and see if it builds (I really would like to have blocks  
available as a cross-platform feature)!

Of course, after that, unfortunately the black rider of C++ comes into  
the picture (for us), which makes it troublesome until clang supports  
the language more extensively...

Joakim

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