Objective C on Windows

As part of my long journey of study, I decided to learn new things every day. Today, I chose to learn Objective C. And let's learn it on Windows!

I. Installation
To start with Objective C on Windows, you will need GNUstep - a open sourced version of Cocoa framework. You can download it from GNUstep.org's downloading page under Download section, or you can download dedicated installers . If you choose dedicated installers, install each of the following packages in order (Basically you should install GNUstep MSYS System, GNUstep Core and GNUstep Cairo)

Package	Required?	Stable	Unstable	Notes
GNUstep MSYS System	Required	0.30.0	-	MSYS/MinGW System
GNUstep Core	Required	0.34.0	-	GNUstep Core
GNUstep Devel	Optional	1.4.0	-	Developer Tools
GNUstep Cairo	Optional	0.34.0	-	Cairo Backend
ProjectCenter	Optional	0.6.1-2	-	IDE (Like Xcode, but not as complex)
Gorm	Optional	1.2.20-2	-	Interface Builder (Like Xcode NIB builder)

Another choice is to install MinGW with options to include GNUstep core packages.

II. Hello World Program

Create a GNUmakefile as below and save it as a [.mak] file:

include $(GNUSTEP_MAKEFILES)/common.make
# make a simple program in Objective-C, call it HelloWorld
TOOL_NAME = HelloWorld
# The implementation Objective-C file which is going to be compiled
HelloWorld_OBJC_FILES = hello.m
# Header files of your project
#HelloWorld_HEADER_FILES = xxx.h //here goes all header files (.h). For the moment, on n'en a pas.
# Define compilation flags
ADDITIONAL_CPPFLAGS = -Wall -Wno-import
# Include rules for creating a command line tool for Objective-C
include $(GNUSTEP_MAKEFILES)/tool.make

Then create a file named hello.m with the following content:

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>
 
int main (int argc, const char * argv[]) {
 
    NSAutoreleasePool * pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
    NSLog(@"***Hello World!***");//This will output Hello World!
 
    [pool release];
    return 0;
}

Now open a command line window of GNUsetup Environment. You can choose Start / GNUstep / Shell
After the window opened, cd to folder that you have saved the code and make file, for example:

cd C:\objectiveC\HelloWorld

Next, type the command make
There will be a new folder with name "obj" added to the current folder. Now cd to obj folder, and run the compiled program with the following command

HelloWorld

Voila! You've got Objective C in Windows. Let's learn more about Objective C from RyPress or any other site!!!
Enjoy Objective C ^_^.
Some day, I will continue studying Swift, although most developers should avoid Swift