[The Godfather]

A simple but important question for me. I am pretty agnostic about which computer platform I use, but I will be strongly inclined towards an LCD iMac if it comes with free Cocoa development tools. I would rather not use EVER the evul developing environments from Microsoft.

Project Builder is free with OSX now, has Apple stated that it will be free forever?

[larkost]

Apple has made no promises about ProjectBuilder what-so-ever. However PB is simply a nice interface to GCC, which is based on the normal (as in compiles on everything, free as in speech) GCC, and there is an active project to merge Apple's version as completely as possible with that version. Objective-C is already there (not including Apple's Frameworks such as Foundation and AppKit), and Obj-C++ is moving in that direction (apparently this is a massive undertaking, and requires some changes in the way Apple does things internally, possibly to the better...). So there is little point in Apple trying to sell PB commercially, the real horsepower is already committed to being free. It is my opinion that you are completely safe in this regard.

[Angus_D]

I think they have said that they probably will be free for the forseeable future -- I can't see any argument to making them cost money.

Also, Obj-C++ has been working since 10.1, by the way.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by Angus_D:
<STRONG>I think they have said that they probably will be free for the forseeable future -- I can't see any argument to making them cost money.

Also, Obj-C++ has been working since 10.1, by the way.</STRONG>

I think he means that Obj-C++ isn't yet working in the mainstream GCC, only GCC/Apple (my name for Apple's own fork of the GCC codebase).

Apple is trying to merge its stuff back into the mainstream GCC code. Once that happens, we should have Obj-C++ there, and then even of ProjectBuilder is taken back to the realm of the commercial, you'd still be able to get a free compiler.

[sadie]

Originally posted by larkost:
<STRONG>Obj-C++ ... (apparently this is a massive undertaking, and requires some changes in the way Apple does things internally, possibly to the better...)</STRONG>

???

[Angus_D]

Originally posted by Millennium:
<STRONG>I think he means that Obj-C++ isn't yet working in the mainstream GCC, only GCC/Apple (my name for Apple's own fork of the GCC codebase).

Apple is trying to merge its stuff back into the mainstream GCC code. Once that happens, we should have Obj-C++ there, and then even of ProjectBuilder is taken back to the realm of the commercial, you'd still be able to get a free compiler.</STRONG>

One word: Darwin.

[larkost]

sadie: As I understood a couple of mailing list entries from Stan Shebs (compiler god), he said that there were some things in Apple's Obj-C++ frontend that would make synching it (as is) with the regular GCC source tricky at best, and would probably introduce a lot of problems/bugs in conjunction with the C++ front end. His thinking seemed to be that the path of least resistance would be to change a couple of the tricks that Apple's version requires (and possibly write some extra on-the-side hacks) to bring them more in line with the mainstream GCC, and then start thinking about a full merge.

This might have some benefits to Apple (in addition to the growing pains it would undoubtably cause) both in the chance to re-think some things in the frontend, and then in lowering (and then eliminating) the differences between Apple-GCC and mainstream GCC (think cross-compiling).