Saagar Jha > On Oct 9, 2019, at 10:19, Turtle Creek Software via Cocoa-dev > <cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com> wrote: > > Why is Cocoa source code hidden? > > Many of the frustrations we had with the 64-bit update attempt were caused > by Cocoa's lack of visible source. It was a "black box" that often required > trial-and-error to figure out. Yeah, the headers are visible, and Apple has > info online. But sometimes that was not sufficient to understand the actual > implementation details. > > When debugging, the stack trace inside Cocoa was just a bunch of > rarely-helpful Assembly. No way to set breakpoints inside Cocoa classes, or > step through their C code. More mysteries and headaches.
You can set symbolic breakpoints inside of Cocoa. And a good disassembler will get you a significant portion of the way there if you’re trying to debug in the internals of a method. > I personally learned C++ while using the PowerPlant library from > Metrowerks. Its source files were totally exposed. Seeing comments and code > really helped. When designing or debugging, it was possible to step through > their code and see exactly how it functioned. Cocoa would be so much > easier to use if its source was accessible like that. > > In fact, why isn't Cocoa open source? Apple open-sources Swift and the > Darwin kernel. Surely the GUI can't be any riskier to expose to developers? > > Our programmers found several PowerPlant bugs over the years. We fixed them > right away in our copy, and reported them so they were fixed in the next > update. Apple could get the same benefit for Cocoa. Seems like a win-win. > > Someone suggested that I send comments to Tim Cook or whomever at Apple. > That seems a good idea, but I'd like to see discussion results, first. > Assemble more viewpoints. > > Casey McDermott > TurtleSoft.com > _______________________________________________ > > Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) > > Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. > Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com > > Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: > https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/saagar%40saagarjha.com > > This email sent to saa...@saagarjha.com _______________________________________________ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
