Re: [platform-swt-dev] Mac OS X Port

[Maurice Parker <maurice@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hey,

I'm another Java developer that was shocked that OS X wasn't on the roadmap
for upcoming SWT ports.  Many thanks to OTI & IBM for opening the source so
that we can fix that!

On 11/12/01 10:33 AM, "Suhail Ahmed" <ilyanov@xxxxxxx> wrote:

> My mistake. Allow me to call it JCocoa if you will. I agree with you
> about bypassing the JNI layer. Given that the question decomposes to
> where to encapsulate JCocoa calls. Should we do it in the widgets
> packages or in the internal packages by creating an aqua package.

I don't think that a org.eclipse.swt.internal package at all.  Apple has
done all that for us in com.apple.cocoa.application &
com.apple.cocoa.foundation.  Since all of Cocoa is available to us as Java
classes, no native code needs to be written.

At a glance it looks like most if  not all of SWT can be mapped directly to
Cocoa by writing Adapters (wrappers).  For example
org.eclipse.swt.graphics.Color would map to
com.apple.cocoa.application.NSColor and org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Button would
map to com.apple.cocoa.application.NSButton.  Not all of them are so
obvious, but I think you get the picture.

The biggest thing that I am struggling with so far is what actually is the
SWT API?  I was expecting a set of interfaces with separate implementations
for each platform, but I'm not finding it.  Can someone with SWT knowledge
help out here?

Another big problem I'm having getting started with this thing is CVS and
the build environment.  It looks like you need to be using Eclipse to manage
the large project/sub-projects layout and handle the multiple identical
class definitions.  Is it normal when beginning a port to a new platform to
cross compile until Eclipse is up and running on the new platform?

-Maurice