Is it possible to run a compiled program with Xcode on Mac OS X in FreeBSD? (Objective-C/Cocoa)

Question

Hi. I have a plan to build a web-site which running CGI made with Cocoa. My final goal is develop on Mac OS X, and run on FreeBSD. Is this possible?

As I know, there is a free implementation of some NextStep classes, the GNUStep. The web-site is almost built with only strings. I read GNUStep documents, classes are enough. DB connection will be made with C interfaces.

Most biggest problem which I'm concerning is linking and binary compatibility. I'm currently configuring FreeBSD on VirtualBox, but I wanna know any possibility informations about this from experts.

This is not a production server. Just a trial. Please feel free to saying anything.

--edit--

I confused Foundation and Cocoa frameworks. What I said was Foundation. Basic classes which just enough to manipulating strings.

Answer 1

You won't get binary compatibility. Mac OS X uses the Mach-O object format and FreeBSD uses ELF, like linux. Cocoa won't work on platforms other than Mac OS, but if you stick to POSIX and open-source libraries though, you shouldn't have too much trouble building your CGI (and any dependencies) on your FreeBSD machine.

Also, Cocoa for a website? It's the Mac OS standard library for GUIs, associated datastructures, and various helpers. Apple used to promote something called WebObjects which was similar to Cocoa for the web, but I haven't heard anything about it in ages. I don't think Cocoa will work for a website, unless you just mean write a custom web server that has a graphical front-end in Cocoa.

Answer 2

Sounds like your trying to shoehorn tools onto OS and hardware they were not designed for. There are hacks to get almost anything running on top of anything else but why ask for all the grief?

The entire point of the entire Apple API is that you have integration from hardware to OS to development tools. You supposed to pay more up front in return for greater robustness and lower over all lifecycle cost. (It doesn't always work just like Linux doesn't always save money and Windows doesn't always provide the software choices you need but that is the design goal.) When you break Apple's hardware-OS-Dev trinity you have to start fighting the API and the hardware instead of letting it work for you.

I don't think what you're doing will work and even if it does it will cost a lot of time and in the end time is money. Unless your being forced by external circumstances beyond your control to use this configuration, I would strongly suggest you do whatever it takes to find another way to accomplish what you want.

Answer 3

It’s entirely possible to cross-develop using Xcode. The Cocotron does this – and provides an implementation of Foundation – but doesn’t currently target FreeBSD. You could probably use it as a template to set up cross-development for BSD targets using GNUstep, but it won’t be easy.