From: John Joyce <dangerwillrobinsondanger@...>
Date: 2007-10-01T11:08:36+09:00
Subject: Re: Help with a Windows port of a Ruby extension


On Sep 30, 2007, at 2:56 PM, Scott Mckie wrote:

> I'm working on a game that's in the early stages, and I want to make
> sure it runs on both OS X and Windows before I continue  
> development.  OS
> X is my primary OS, and it runs fine on that.  But it crashes in
> Windows.
>
> The setup is this:  the core of the game is written in Objective C,  
> and
> I'm using Ruby for the scripting of the game.  I wrote a very small  
> Ruby
> extension to act as a bridge between the two (basically a wrapper  
> around
> the Objective C game objects).  Everything was fine, in OS X.  In  
> order
> to get it to compile in Windows, I had to write a separate  
> extension to
> act as a wrapper around the Objective C /classes/ and do a hairy  
> little
> dance to register them, because I don't of a compiler flag in the
> standard gcc that's an equivalent of Apple's -undefined suppress,  
> and I
> don't want to link against all the main project files in the  
> extension.
>
> And so, my current problem:  it still runs fine in OS X, but it chokes
> when I try to create the Objective C object from within the Ruby
> extension.  I create the Ruby class-wrapper object, register the
> Objective C class, test it thoroughly to make sure that it's  
> behaving as
> expected -- it's all fine when I do it from the main program.  I even
> tried printing the pointer to the Obj-C class to make sure it's not
> getting mangled, and it doesn't seem to change at all.  But all I  
> get is
> garbage when I try to instantiate the class.
>
> I realize that my problem might likely turn out to have nothing to do
> with Ruby itself.  In truth, the Ruby part seems to be behaving as
> expected.  I pose the question here because I think I'm likely to find
> more Ruby people with experience in Objective C than  Objective C  
> people
> with experience in Ruby.  And likewise for Windows.
>
> I'm using Ruby 1.8.6 on both machines.  My Mac is running OS 10.4.10,
> and the Windows machine I'm using for development is ...  Windows XP
> Home.  I'll put the source up at
> http://greay.phpwebhosting.com/shooter/shooter.r67.zip for people to
> look at, as well.
> -- 
> Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
>
Well, if you want Objective-C to be portable, you'll have to build it  
with GNUStep/OpenStep instead of Cocoa.
This can be difficult since many functions and libraries in Cocoa are  
not found in the GNU stuff.
For the most part you can consider Objective-C to be OS X only, just  
as much of what is written for Windows uses Windows-only code that  
can't be ported, or ported easily.
Regardless, Windows doesn't include the necessary runtime for  
Objective-C.
You might want to re-write using another language instead of Obj-C to  
make it crossplatform.