GNUstep

Short description: Open source widget toolkit and application development tools

GNUstep

GNUstep screenshot, showing Window Maker and a variety of applications developed with the GNUstep libraries, including a gomoku game, calculator, and TextEdit.[1]

Developer(s)| GNUstep Developers
Stable release|

make 2.9.0, base 1.28.0, gui 0.29.0, back 0.29.0 / May 6, 2021; 2 years ago (2021-05-06)

Preview release|

only in the SVN software repository

Written in| Objective-C
Operating system| Cross-platform
Type| Widget toolkit
License| GNU General Public License for the applications
GNU Lesser General Public License for the libraries.
Website| gnustep.github.io

GNUstep is a free software implementation of the Cocoa (formerly OpenStep) Objective-C frameworks, widget toolkit, and application development tools for Unix-like operating systems and Microsoft Windows. It is part of the GNU Project.

GNUstep features a cross-platform, object-oriented IDE. Apart from the default Objective-C interface, GNUstep also has bindings for Java, Ruby,[2] GNU Guile and Scheme.[3] The GNUstep developers track some additions to Apple's Cocoa to remain compatible. The roots of the GNUstep application interface are the same as the roots of Cocoa: NeXTSTEP and OpenStep. GNUstep thus predates Cocoa, which emerged when Apple acquired NeXT's technology and incorporated it into the development of the original Mac OS X, while GNUstep was initially an effort by GNU developers to replicate the technically ambitious NeXTSTEP's programmer-friendly features.

## Contents

* 1 History
* 2 Software architecture
* 2.1 Rendering
* 2.2 Paradigms
* 2.3 Other interfaces
* 3 Applications
* 3.1 Written from scratch
* 3.2 Ported from NeXTSTEP, OPENSTEP, or macOS
* 3.3 Forks of GNUstep
* 4 Class capabilities
* 4.1 Foundation Kit
* 4.2 Application Kit
* 5 See also
* 6 References
* 7 External links

## History

GNUstep began when Paul Kunz and others at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center wanted to port HippoDraw from NeXTSTEP to another platform. Instead of rewriting HippoDraw from scratch and reusing only the application design, they decided to rewrite the NeXTSTEP object layer on which the application depended. This was the first version of libobjcX. It enabled them to port HippoDraw to Unix systems running the X Window System without changing a single line of their application source. After the OpenStep specification was released to the public in 1994, they decided to write a new objcX which would adhere to the new APIs. The software would become known as "GNUstep".[4]

## Software architecture

Illustrates software components of the Linux desktop stack like the display server, graphics control element libraries or graphical shells.

### Rendering

GNUstep contains a set of graphical control elements written in the Objective-C programming language.

The graphical user interface (GUI) of GNUMail is composed of graphics control elements. GNUMail has to interact with the windowing system, e.g. X11 or Wayland, and its graphical user interface has to be rendered. GNUstep's backend provides a small set of functions used by the user interface library to interface to the actual windowing system. It also has a rendering engine which emulates common Postscript functions. The package gnustep-back provides the following backends:

* cairo – default backend using the Cairo 2D graphics library.
* winlib – default backend on Microsoft Windows systems. Cairo and Windows API variants.
* art – old (deprecated) backend on unix-like systems. Uses the vector-based PostScriptlike 2d graphics library Libart.
* xlib – old (deprecated) X11 backend.

### Paradigms

GNUstep inherits some design principles proposed in OPENSTEP (GNUstep predates Cocoa, but Cocoa is based on OPENSTEP) as well as the Objective-C language.

* Model–view–controller paradigm
* Target–action
* Drag-and-drop
* Delegation
* Message forwarding (through NSInvocation)

### Other interfaces

In addition to the Objective-C interface, some small projects under the GNUstep umbrella implement other APIs from Apple:

* The Boron library aims to implement the Carbon API. It is very incomplete.[5]
* The CoreBase library is designed to be compatible with Core Foundation. It is not complete enough to for the Base (Foundation Kit) component to simply be a wrapper around it.[6]
* The QuartzCore library implements Core Animation APIs.[7] The Opal library implements Quartz 2D.

(As of February 2020), there are no projects that build the Swift programming language against the GNUstep Objective-C environment.

## Applications

Here are some examples of applications written for or ported to GNUstep.[8]

### Written from scratch

* Addresses, an address/contacts manager
* Étoilé, a desktop environment
* GNUMail, an e-mail client
* GNUstep Database Library 2, an Enterprise Objects Framework clone
* GNUstepWeb, an application server compatible with WebObjects 4.x
* Gorm, an interface builder
* GWorkspace, a workspace and file manager
* Grr, an RSS feed reader
* Oolite, a clone of Elite, a space simulation game with trading components
* PRICE, imaging application
* ProjectCenter, the Project Builder or Xcode equivalent.
* TalkSoup, an IRC client
* Terminal
* Zipper, a file archiver tool

### Ported from NeXTSTEP, OPENSTEP, or macOS

* Adun
* BioCocoa
* Chess
* Cenon
* DoomEd
* EdenMath
* Eggplant
* Emacs
* Fortunate
* Gomoku
* NeXTGO
* PikoPixel
* TextEdit
* TimeMon

### Forks of GNUstep

* Universal Windows Platform, which includes a WinObjC suite consisting of various parts of GNUstep and Microsoft's own implementations of things like the Cocoa Touch API.[9]

## Class capabilities

### Foundation Kit

The Foundation Kit provides basic classes such as wrapper classes and data structure classes.

### Application Kit

The Application Kit provides classes oriented around graphical user interface capabilities.

## See also

* Darling, a compatibility layer that relies on GNUstep
* GNUstep fat bundle
* GNUstep Renaissance, framework for XML description of portable GNUstep/Mac OS X user interfaces
* Miller Columns, the method of file tree browsing the GWorkspace File Viewer uses
* Property list, often used file format to store user settings
* StepTalk, Scripting framework
* Window Maker, a window manager designed to emulate the NeXT GUI as part of the wider GNUstep project

## References

1. ↑ Ported from NeXTSTEP. Recent builds, when built with libobjc2, can use a newer version ported from Mac OS X Snow Leopard
2. ↑ "GNUstep Developer Tools - RIGS". http://www.gnustep.org/experience/RIGS.html.
3. ↑ GScheme
4. ↑ "GNUstep History". http://gnustep.made-it.com/Guides/History.html.
5. ↑ "gnustep/libs-boron: Boron is the atom that comes before carbon.". GNUstep. 23 March 2019. https://github.com/gnustep/libs-boron.
6. ↑ "gnustep/libs-corebase". GNUstep. 19 November 2019. https://github.com/gnustep/libs-corebase.
7. ↑ "gnustep/libs-quartzcore". GNUstep. 11 December 2019. https://github.com/gnustep/libs-quartzcore.
8. ↑ "Category:Applications - GNUstepWiki". http://wiki.gnustep.org/index.php/Category:Applications.
9. ↑ "GNUstep Objective-C Runtime 2.0". https://github.com/gnustep/libobjc2/releases/tag/v2.0. "Note: Microsoft's WinObjC project contains a friendly fork of this library that includes a work around for the incremental linking issue."

## External links

| Wikimedia Commons has media related to GNUstep.

|

* GNUstep.org project homepage
* GNUstep Applications and Developer Tutorials
* The GNUstep Application Project
* A 2003 interview with GNUstep developer Nicola Pero
* FLOSS Weekly Interview with Gregory Casamento and Riccardo Mottola from GNUstep
* GNUstep on Debian, FreeBSD, MacPorts
* NEXTSPACE desktop environment, based on GNUstep

* v
* t
* e

GNU Project

History|

* GNU Manifesto
* Free Software Foundation
* Europe
* India
* Latin America
* History of free software

Licenses|

* GNU General Public License
* linking exception
* font exception
* GNU Lesser General Public License
* GNU Affero General Public License
* GNU Free Documentation License

Software|

* GNU (variants)
* Hurd
* Linux-libre
* glibc
* Bash
* coreutils
* findutils
* Build System
* GCC
* binutils
* GDB
* GRUB
* GNOME
* GNUstep
* GIMP
* Jami
* GNU Emacs
* GNU TeXmacs
* GNU Octave
* GNU R
* GSL
* GMP
* GNU Electric
* GNU Archimedes
* GNUnet
* GNU Privacy Guard
* Gnuzilla (IceCat)
* GNU Health
* GNUmed
* GNU LilyPond
* GNU Go
* GNU Chess
* Gnash
* Guix
* Guix System Distribution
* more...

Public
speakers|

* Alexandre Oliva
* Benjamin Mako Hill
* Bradley M. Kuhn
* Federico Heinz
* Frédéric Couchet
* Georg C. F. Greve
* John Sullivan
* José E. Marchesi
* Joshua Gay
* Kefah T. Issa
* Loïc Dachary
* Nagarjuna G.
* Peter Heath
* Richard M. Stallman

Other topics|

* GNU/Linux naming controversy
* Revolution OS
* Free Software Foundation anti-Windows campaigns
* Defective by Design

* v
* t
* e

List of widget toolkits

Low-level|

| On AmigaOS|

* Intuition

|

On Classic Mac OS,
macOS|

| Unknown, native|

* Macintosh Toolbox

|

* Carbon

On Windows|

* Windows API

On Unix,
under X11|

* Xlib
* XCB
* X Toolkit Intrinsics, Xt, X-Toolkit

On BeOS, Haiku|

* BeOS, ZETA, Haiku

On cross-platform|

| CLI|

* OpenTK

|

* GDK
* SDL

Java|

* JOGL

On Android|

| CLI|

* Xamarin.Android

|

High-level|

| On AmigaOS|

* BOOPSI
* MUI
* ReAction GUI
* Zune

|

On Classic Mac OS,
macOS|

| Object Pascal|

* MacApp (v1, v2)

|

Objective-C,
Swift|

| Desktop|

* Cocoa

|

Mobile|

* Cocoa Touch

C++|

* MacApp (v3)
* PowerPlant
* THINK Class Library

CLI|

| Desktop|

* Xamarin.Mac

|

Mobile|

* Xamarin.iOS

On Windows|

| CLI|

| Desktop|

* Windows Forms
* XAML (Silverlight, WinRT XAML, WPF)
* XNA Framework

|

Web|

* XAML (Silverlight)

Mobile|

* XNA Framework

C++|

* MFC
* ATL
* WTL
* OWL

Object Pascal|

* VCL

On Unix,
under X11|

* Athena (Xaw)
* LessTif
* Motif
* OLIT
* XForms

On Android|

| C++|

* Qt for Android

|

Cross-platform,
by language|

| C|

* GTK
* IUP
* Tk
* wxC
* XForms
* XVT

|

C++|

* CEGUI
* CLX
* FLTK
* FOX toolkit
* GLUI
* Gtkmm
* JUCE
* Nana
* Qt
* Rogue Wave Views
* TnFOX
* Ultimate++
* VCF
* Wt
* wxWidgets
* YAAF
* SFML

Objective-C|

* GNUstep

CLI|

| Desktop|

* Gtk#
* Tao (OpenTK, TaoClassic)
* wx.NET
* UIML.NET
* MonoGame

|

Web|

* Moonlight

Mobile|

* MonoGame
* Xamarin.Forms

* DFL
* DlangUI
* DWT
* GtkD
* QtD
* wxD

Flash|

* Apache Flex (MXML)

Haskell|

* Gtk2Hs
* wxHaskell

Java|

| Desktop|

* AWT
* FXML (JavaFX)
* Qt Jambi
* Swing
* SWT
* wx4j
* jUIML

|

Web|

* GWT
* FXML (JavaFX)

Mobile|

* LWUIT

JavaScript|

* Dojo Toolkit
* Echo
* Ext JS
* Google Closure
* jQuery UI
* Qooxdoo
* YUI

Common Lisp|

* CAPI
* CLIM
* Common Graphics
* Ltk
* McCLIM

Lua|

* IUP
* wxLua

Pascal|

| Desktop|

* LCL

|

Mobile|

* LCL

Object Pascal|

| Desktop|

* CLX
* fpGUI
* IP Pascal
* LCL

|

Mobile|

* LCL

Perl|

* Perl/Tk
* wxPerl

PHP|

* PHP-GTK
* PHP-Qt
* wxPHP

Python|

* PyGObject
* PyGTK
* Pyjs
* PyQt
* PySide
* Tkinter
* wxPython

Ruby|

* Shoes
* FXRuby
* Ruby-GNOME2
* qtbindings
* QtRuby
* wxRuby

Tcl|

* Tcl/Tk

XML|

* GladeXML
* Lively Kernel
* Pyjs
* Rialto Toolkit
* XAML
* XUL
* UXP
* Wt

shell|

* whiptail
* dialog

* v
* t
* e

Software in the Public Interest

People|

* Martin Michlmayr (President)
* Bdale Garbee

Projects|

* 0 A.D.
* Arch Linux
* Debian
* Drizzle
* Drupal
* FFmpeg
* Fluxbox
* freedesktop.org
* FreedomBox
* Gallery Project
* GNU TeXmacs
* GNUstep
* Jenkins
* LibreOffice
* MinGW
* Open and Free Technology Community
* Open Bioinformatics Foundation
* Open64
* OpenEmbedded
* OpenVAS
* OpenWrt
* PostgreSQL
* Privoxy
* SproutCore
* X.Org Foundation
* YafaRay

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