Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by xvilka 2231 days ago
They need objc2swift, something like c2rust[1], to speed up the legacy code upgrade. Transpiler and code refactoring tool, all while preserving the ability to run tests. Or, on the other side, c2rust should get an Objective C support as an input.

[1] https://github.com/immunant/c2rust
1 comments
cerberusss 2231 days ago
In my opinion, the integration between Objective-C and Swift is so incredibly seamless, that there's no need to translate existing Objective-C code.

When I started working at my current client, there was a huge existing Objective-C code base to talk to an internal HTTP API. I just started coding. When I needed to add functions, I subclassed Objective-C classes in Swift.

link
zapzupnz 2231 days ago
There is need to translate existing Objective-C code: on platforms where the Objective-C bridge is unavailable (Linux and Windows), Swift code can not call Objective-C code, nor toll-free bridge with Objective-C types, and therefore Objective-C types cannot be subclassed.

For non-Apple platforms, you have to use a different implementation of Foundation — which has pretty good but not identical coverage to Apple's one.

As a side note, it's always seemed clear to me that when Apple provides a new technology, they provide a stop-gap solution, like Carbon, for developers who, for a variety of possible reasons, may not be able or willing to use the new tech, like Cocoa.

The bridge between Objective-C and Swift has always seemed like Carbon to me.

Fortunately, unlike when Carbon was canned and rewriting for Cocoa seemed like a real chore, I don't think Apple will can the Objective-C bridge any time soon — but for Swift code now targeting or intending to target non-Apple platforms, it may be best to start thinking about migrating away from relying on the bridge now — decarbonify your Swift code.

link
DagAgren 2231 days ago
Doesn't seem like there would be much demand to run legacy Objective-C code on other platforms, as it would most likely be strongly tied into macOS or iOS APIs that would be availble anyway.
link
zapzupnz 2231 days ago
Indeed. Although, some of the things that Apple's ObjC Foundation provides that aren't in Swift's cross-platform Foundation are sorely missed — but I doubt there's much impetus to put them in Swift's cross-platform Foundation, either.
link
cerberusss 2231 days ago
Yeah, that could be an interesting use case.
link