[Debian GNUstep maintainers] Developing GNUstep applications in Objective-C using Emacs?

[Yavor Doganov]

Paul Chany wrote:
> I know that almost everybody probably uses ProjectCenter and Gorm to
> develope GNUstep applications in Objective-C language on GNU
> systems.

Well, I don't think this is true for ProjectCenter.

> But are there somebody who uses Emacs for developing GNUstep in
> Objective-C language?

My guess is many people, including upstream GNUstep core developers.

> I want to start developing Renaissance applications in Obj-C using
> Emacs because the PC Box that I'm using is an old machine and GUI's
> is extremely slow on this system.

I'm not sure I understand this.  Renaissance intensively uses
gnustep-gui, and logic dictates that Renaissance-based apps should be
even slower than using plain methods or loading .gorms.  But it is a
good choice nevertheless.

Or you mean that you must avoid using GUI apps for *development*?  If
so, that makes sense, sure.

> I like Emacs as an editor and know for Emacs CEDET project but I think
> CEDET doesn't support Obj-C so far at all or if does than it does very
> bad. 

I'm not familiar with CEDET (I tried it once only after it got merged
in Emacs, and immediately concluded that this is not something for
me), but if you have an idea what such support should entail (Skeleton
for projects using gnustep-make?  Something else?), then you can use
M-x report-emacs-bug to file a wishlist bug in their tracker.
(I might find time to work on it some day...)

> I want to hear about that if someone uses Emacs for this, about
> experiences how to develope GNUstep using Emacs (how to setup Emacs,
> whether one uses Emacs EDE-mode, etc.)?

I don't have any special setup.  ObjC-mode is quite capable, you only
need to add -*-objc-*- to header files, otherwise they're visited in C
mode which is slightly annoying.

For .gsmarkup files, nxml-mode or xml-mode is fine.  For makefiles,
makefile-gmakefile-mode.

That said, I don't have a clue why one would need an IDE for any
software development, be it GNUstep or something else.  Emacs is quite
sufficient for me.