ANNOUNCE.1.9

GNUstep Objective-C Runtime 1.9
===============================

This the ninth official release of the GNUstep Objective-C runtime (a.k.a.
libobjc2).  This runtime was designed to support the features of modern
dialects of Objective-C for use with GNUstep and other Objective-C programs.
Highlights of this release include:

- Support for 64-bit ARM (AArch64) processors, including assembly fast paths
  for message sending.

- Improved the dispatch table representation to improve performance and cache
  usage on the fast path.

- The implementation of `imp_implementationWithBlock`, the function that allows
  blocks to be used as methods, no longer requires physical pages to be mapped
  both writeable and executable.

- Numerous improvements to the interaction between runtime functions and ARC.

- Support for Thumb-2 interworking on ARM.  Note that the library must be
  compiled for ARMv7 or ARMv6T2 for this code to be enabled.  Once it has been,
  other Objective-C binaries linked with the library can be compiled as ARM or
  Thumb-2 code.  This will also generate Thumb-2 message send functions,
  improving instruction cache usage.

- Significant improvements to ARC, including

  * The runtime no longer acquires a global lock on every object deallocation (a
    global lock is still used for objects that have weak references). *NOTE:*
    This is incompatible with other code directly inspecting the reference
    count and will break with older versions of GNUstep Base!

  * Weak references use a scheme closer to C++ `std::weak_pointer` and are
    lazily zeroed on access.  This reduces the space overheads for weak
    references.

  * Some additional helper functions are added for use in `NSObject` and other
    root classes,  which simplifies the layering between the runtime and the
    Foundation (or equivalent) implementation.

- Improvements to how the runtime handles layout of ivars with strong alignment
  requirements, which should fix issues relating to using vector types in
  Objective-C objects.

- The option to build a separate libobjcxx has been removed.  The runtime will
  now depend on the C++ standard library implementation if no useable C++
  runtime is available.  Note that C++ exception interworking does not work
  because LLVM's libc++abi (shipped by Apple) does not provide GNU-compatible
  hooks and so Objective-C++ exception support will be automatically disabled
  on this platform.  Any other platforms shipping libc++abi should consider
  either GNU libsupc++ or libcxxrt as an alternative.

You may obtain the code for this release from git and use the 1.9 branch:

https://github.com/gnustep/libobjc2.git

Alternatively, a tarball is available from:

https://github.com/gnustep/libobjc2/archive/v1.9.zip
https://github.com/gnustep/libobjc2/archive/v1.9.tar.gz

The runtime library is responsible for implementing the core features of the
object model, as well as exposing introspection features to the user.  The
GNUstep runtime implements Apple's Objective-C Runtime APIs, and a small number
of GCC APIs for legacy compatibility.

This library is based on the Étoilé Objective-C Runtime, an earlier research
prototype, and includes support for non-fragile instance variables,
type-dependent dispatch, and object planes.  It is fully backwards compatible
with the FSF's GCC 4.2.1 Objective-C ABI and also implements a new ABI that is
supported by Clang and Étoilé's LanguageKit and is required for some of the
newer features.

If you come across any problems, please file them in the issue tracker:

https://github.com/gnustep/libobjc2/issues