🚀 go-pugleaf

   I've got some Objective-C code that I'd like to port to my Macintosh.
It doesn't do any graphics or other hard to port stuff, just a lot of
message passing.

   The first thing I thought of was to buy Stepstones Objective-C
compiler (which actually seems to be a translator that turns out
ANSI C), translate to C on my NeXT, move the code to the Mac and
compile it on Think-C.

   However, there are two stumbling blocks in this scheme: (1) Stepstone
doesn't sell a compiler for the NeXT, and (2) the run-time system isn't
available for the Mac.  I thought I was on to something when the person
at Stepstone mentioned that I could buy the source of the run-time
library and port it to the Mac myself.  But then she mentioned the price
tag ($25K!!!).  Apparently, another company in the same situation decided
not to buy the source and rewrite it from the specs.  Reportedly, they
got about 1/3 of the way through it and gave up.

   So, it looks like Stepstone doesn't have any viable solutions, at least
for my budget.

   Does anyone have any other suggestions?  Can the compiler on the NeXT
be persuaded to output ANSI C source code?  Even if it can, what run-time
support is needed?  Does the gcc compiler understand objective-c yet?  Has
it been ported to the Mac?

   Thanks for any suggestions.

Pat McGee, jpm@lanl.gov