[cfe-dev] Building iOS Apps on Linux, Windows and PowerPC Mac OS X

[Don Quixote de la Mancha]

Greetings, Ladies and Germs,

I have decided to release my iOS App Warp Life under the GNU General
Public License.  I haven't actually released any source yet as I'm not
yet certain as to which precise license variant to use (GPLv3, GPLv3
or any later version, Affero GPLv3, as well as any license
exceptions).

   http://www.dulcineatech.com/life/

Among many other things, providing Warp Life's Objectve-C, C and
assembly code source could be helpful to the CLang and LLVM
developers.  It's quite a lot larger and more complex than most other
iOS Apps whose source can be obtained openly, and so could help when
testing your own development tool code.  CLang's static source
analysis in particular has helped me immensely, in that I fixed some
quite serious bugs I would have been very unlikely to have fixed any
other way.

The GPL Release will coincide with the Beta 2 Release.  I have only
two bugs to fix for Beta 2 that I know about, so that release should
be quite soon.  Here are my blocking tasks:

   http://www.dulcineatech.com/life/to-do-list/

At the very least I will write a Makefile so I can build it myself
with Xcode 2's LLVM and GCC on Intel Mac OS X Snow Leopard.  I'm
providing that Makefile to support those who want to build my code on
other platforms than those that the iOS SDK supports.

Even better would be for me to actually do such builds on at least a
few other platforms myself, but that entails building a whole bunch of
cross-compilers that all target ARM Darwin, and link to the iOS SDK's
Public Frameworks.

I've built cross-compilers before, but I've never had any luck with
building CLang and LLVM completely from scratch.  It was some
completely intractible problem with some of the llvm-gcc configure
scripts.  I find the source to ./configure to be as clear as
Carbonite, which is why I would not dream of using it GNU autoconf any
of my own projects.

I haven't actually checked out any CLang/LLVM source in eons though as
I've had to much on my plate.  I reported my build problems on one of
our lists quite a long time ago, so maybe they have since been fixed.

Has anyone here ever used CLang and LLVM to build iOS Apps on other
than Intel Mac OS X?  Do you have any tips for me?

If I possibly can, I'll be releasing Beta 2 this week.

Far more serious than any build issues is my choice of license, as the
text of the GNU GPLv3 as it is actually written makes my head spin
when I try to read it.  On the front page of Slashdot tonight is a
story about the declining usage of the GPL.  The article suggests it's
because more for-profit companies are releasing Open Source Software.

My own take is that the GNU General Public License version 3 doesn't
make sense to anyone when they try to read it.  While I support the
goals it aims to achieve, I regard the GNU General Public License
version 3 itself as appallingly poorly written.

Ever Faithful,

Don Quixote de la Mancha
Dulcinea Technologies Corporation
Software of Elegance and Beauty
http://www.dulcineatech.com
quixote at dulcineatech.com