On Mon, Aug 13, 2012, at 11:30 AM, Jean-Daniel Dupas wrote: > > Thanks for the details. I know what the fragile ABI, and the modern ABI > are but where I don't agree is when Kyle says that it was not possible to > add a refcount ivar when retain/release was introduced. As retain/release > was already defined in the first OpenStep specification > (http://www.gnustep.org/resources/OpenStepSpec/FoundationKit/Protocols/NSObject.html), > it was perfectly possible at that time to choose to add a refcount ivar > to the new NSObject class without breaking anything.
I wasn't exactly around at the time, but a wild guess: NSObject might have needed to stay layout-identical to Object in order for OpenStep to remain compatible with NeXTSTEP binaries. --Kyle Sluder _______________________________________________ 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
