Porting Apps from GnuStep to Cocoa

[Yesurbius]

I was perusing Cocoa documentation on Apple's site, and I saw that Cocoa is the modern form of NextStep Framework. Lights one ... alarm bells rang. While I didn't know much about Cocoa, I had heard a great deal about NextStep, OpenStep, and the later GnuStep project.

It got me to thinking however .. if gnustep and cocoa had the same roots, then shouldn't it be relatively simple to port applications from gnustep to cocoa?

So, hypothetically, couldn't you port gworkspace (which is essentially a clone of the Nextstep workspace manager) over to Mac OS X, do some finishing touches, and essentially have a drop-in replacement for the Finder? I'm looking at the Look and Feel of Gnustep, and picturing it in an Aqua Motif (no pun intended)

 

[lurk]

Yes and no, all of the NSClassObjects should port over fine and get you 97% of the way there in the GUI. The big problem is that the underlying infrastructure is different, Gnustep is really about running on X windows and every now and again someone makes an attempt to revive it on Windows. That is the part that would be a significant effort to port.