Writing Objective-C with Mulle-Objc

mulle-objc #MakeObjCGreatAgain is apparently functional, so let's see how that goes.

mkdir CLICalc
cd CLICalc
mulle-sde init -m foundation/objc-developer executable

This takes more or less forever.

… Still going. OK, finally done. I hate to think it's gonna do that every new project? Or whenever it updates?

Anyway, bbedit . (fuck Xcode), and add at the bottom of import.h and import-private.h:

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>

Make src/main.m useful:

// main.m
#import "import-private.h"
#import "CLICalc.h"

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
    NSAutoreleasePool *pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];

    CLICalc *calc = [[CLICalc alloc] init];
    [calc push:42.0];
    [calc push:69.0];
    double a = [calc pop];
    double b = [calc pop];
    NSLog(@"a=%f, b=%f", a, b);

    [pool release];
    return 0;
}

Create an Objective-C class, src/CLICalc.h:

// CLICalc.h
#import "import-private.h"

@interface CLICalc : NSObject

@property (retain) NSMutableArray *stack;

- (void)push:(double)n;
- (double)pop;

@end

and src/CLICalc.m:

// CLICalc.m
#import "CLICalc.h"

@implementation CLICalc

@synthesize stack = _stack;

- (id)init {
    self = [super init];
    _stack = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
    return self;
}

- (void)dealloc {
    NSLog(@"CLICalc dealloc");
    [_stack release];
    [super dealloc];
}

- (void)push:(double)n {
    [_stack addObject:@(n)];
}

- (double)pop {
    if ( ! [_stack count]) {
        // ERROR: stack underflow
        return 0.0;
    }
    double n = [[_stack lastObject] doubleValue];
    [_stack removeLastObject];
    return n;
}

@end

Doing that without a template was a little hard on the old memory, and I had to use DDG to look up some method names without autocompletion. But I'm pretty sure that's fine.

In mulle-ide, type update to add the new class to cmake: If you look in cmake/_Sources.cmake you should now see CLICalc.m listed.

Now craft to compile. You'll get a spew of crap, but hopefully no errors.

I am getting this, which I can't resolve:

/Users/mdh/Code/CodeMac/CLICalc/src/main.m:21:55: warning: 'NSAutoreleasePool'
      may not respond to 'init'
        NSAutoreleasePool *pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
                                   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ^
1 warning generated.

But NSAutoreleasePool certainly has init, and it seems to not die?

% ./build/Debug/CLICalc
a=69.000000, b=42.000000

Hooray!

Yeah, this isn't amazing. Except: It's supposedly portable now. I can maybe rebuild this on Linux, or Windows? I dunno.

This is almost classic Objective-C, slightly enhanced from 1.0: We didn't have property/synthesize, or nice object wrappers like @() when I were a lad. I typed so many [NSNumber numberWithInteger:n]. So get used to the retain/release/autorelease dance. There's no dot-syntax for property access, type them [] like old-school. But hey, it's a proper compiled language with a nice object system and no GC pausing.

I tried importing Cocoa and got a ludicrous spew of errors, so Mac GUI is gonna be a challenge. But I could import SDL and use that for portable UI, since Objective-C is just C.

Sweet. I'll finish up the calculator's parser in a bit, but then see about doing something useful in it.

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