Regarding the tags, they are used to store a reference to a Java object that corresponds to a given Cocoa object. (Obviously you cannot pass a Java pointer into Cocoa, so we have to pass Java object references which are only available from JNI only, hence the JNI calls NewGlobalRef, DeleteGlobalRef and JNIGetObject. As far as I remember, the int -> Object mapping you're talking about is managed by the JVM itself, not by SWT.)
The Java object id is stored in a "tag" field of Cocoa objects, however there may be issues with this approach because Cocoa sometimes wants to use the "tag" field for its own needs. Here's a letter my colleage Mikhail Kalugin has posted a few month ago to this mailing list:
Recently I met a weird problem with Display.getFocusControl() method:
it was failing with NPE on "OS.JNIGetObject(tag);" call (line 1083).
At first glance, this call doesn't do anything that can throw NPE.
After some investigations I've found the reason — tag wasn't an JNI
object reference. It was a natively set tag by Cocoa itself. I was
using NSAlert class which uses tags for the content view. So when my
application was asking for a focus control, SWT was encountering
NSAlert's window, asking for a tag in order to restore SWT's class and
then failing.
Regarding concretely this issue, the solution is simple: the
OS.JNIGetObject(tag); line can be surrounded by a try..catch block.
However, I think that problem has more deep roots. Really, why does
SWT use tag()/setTag() methods for storing JNI refs? Since Cocoa can
use tag field itself, it doesn't look as a secure solution. There are
methods for creating/reading/updating instance variables in Cocoa
object. So it would be possible to use some variable like
"swt_jni_ref" to store refs.
He was recommended to open a bug to track it. I believe what you should do for your port is:
1) add a uniquely named field to your Cocoa objects instead of a generic "tag" field (e.g. "swt_tag");
2) instead of adding tag/setTag methods to each Cocoa object you define on SWT side, just read/write that "swt_tag" field directly using Objective-C runtime calls.
And yes, if D virtual machine does not readily map objects to integers (how does it handle native callbacks then?), you can manage the mapping yourself.
--
Andrey.
