Adium and Linux and other OS

SneakerXZ · Post by **SneakerXZ** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 3:04 pm

Hi,

Why here isn't Adium for other OS? i know many applications running after all OS. And implement GTK+, Win32API, Cocoa isn't hard. You will find new developers for other OS etc... And Adium will can running on other or no? What is blocking developing for other os? competition?

BTW: I read this http://trac.adiumx.com/wiki/AdiumForWindows and i too read other topic...

You can any featurers support only on Mac OS X remove etc...

Thx for your suggest on my opion.

Post by **bgannin** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 3:11 pm

The amount of work necessary to make this even a remote possibility is huge, and it's overrated. There's nothing wrong with clients for particular OSes. Trillian isn't making a Mac client, Adium isn't making a Windows client. Gaim exists for all if you need it that bad.

And as always in open source, if you want something done so badly... take the source and contribute away.

SneakerXZ · Post by **SneakerXZ** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 3:14 pm

Yes Trillian isnt for other OS but it is normal in world Windows. I like other OS because developers developing on other OS support all OS. It is reason why i ask why is hard make AdiumX for other OS.

mgiannul · Post by **mgiannul** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 3:56 pm

Being around the OSS community for a while now, let me just say...

OSX is not the same as Linux/Unix in this sense! People code just for OSX, because it IS different in the way you develop software for it. Adium would no longer be adium if you developed it to be cross platform *nix compatible. Adium is/was (as of my initial impression, coming to OSX after being a strict linux guy for a while) a polished way of implementing the best things about gaim combined with features you can only get on OSX.

Thusly, there is no real benefit (on the most basic level) to trying to port adium to a different platform. Use gaim. Or something else if you like the features. There will be other options on the horizon eventually (libchat?). But, no, adium will not be cross platform. That's just counter-intuitive.

Ludge · Post by **Ludge** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 4:01 pm

SneakerXZ wrote:Yes Trillian isnt for other OS but it is normal in world Windows. I like other OS because developers developing on other OS support all OS. It is reason why i ask why is hard make AdiumX for other OS.

The difficulty in porting Adium to other platforms would be because the app makes heavy use of Cocoa and other Mac-only frameworks. These do not exist for windows.

Without these frameworks (which belong to Apple), being available for windows, there can't be Adium on windows.

Ethion · Post by **Ethion** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 4:44 pm

If only the NeXT computers was still around, it would be some what possible to make a client for it.

But as Ludge said, the programming language isn't available on other platforms than OS X.

Although NeXT computers also supported Cocoa. anyways, not possible.

Post by **bgannin** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 5:45 pm

Ethion wrote:If only the NeXT computers was still around, it would be some what possible to make a client for it.

But as Ludge said, the programming language isn't available on other platforms than OS X.

Although NeXT computers also supported Cocoa. anyways, not possible.

Actually, to be clear, the language(s) [C, Objective C] are available on all platforms, it's the Cocoa (and other supporting) frameworks that aren't.

Ethion · Post by **Ethion** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 7:03 pm

bgannin wrote:
Ethion wrote:If only the NeXT computers was still around, it would be some what possible to make a client for it.

But as Ludge said, the programming language isn't available on other platforms than OS X.

Although NeXT computers also supported Cocoa. anyways, not possible.
Actually, to be clear, the language(s) [C, Objective C] are available on all platforms, it's the Cocoa (and other supporting) frameworks that aren't.

ah rgr. thank you for clearing that up for me.

ofri · Post by **ofri** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 9:46 pm

Actually, it should be possible to make Adium run on *nix/linux and/or windows using GNUStep and apple's CF-Lite. I know that NivaMind (a commercial app) uses GNUStep in order to make their code written in objc/cocoa run on windows.
With that said, some of the frameworks adium uses are OS X specific like the address book framework, webkit (may be portable but i no nothing about it), system configuration and so on.
The bottom line is that with some (probably a lot) work it will be possible to make adium to run natively on windows/linux, but it wont be fun. Since fun is what makes all the contributers of adium to do what they do, this will probably never happen.

ajmas · Post by **ajmas** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 3:46 pm

The great thing about Adium is that it is open source

If you know anyone who has the time to give on making a port to another platform, then this is a very real possibility, for this reason. I think in the meantime the core Adium team would rather concentrate on where their strengths lie, along with their targeted audience.

Trillian is a good alternative on Windows, but being a closed source project it would not be ported to any other platform, unless the core team wished it.

For what's worth I am more insterested in someone with voice/video development experience joining in and providing this extra functionality to Adium.

Post by **cbarrett** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 7:44 pm

The real difficulty in porting Adium to another OS lies in GNUStep. They are very reluctant to adopt the new changes Apple is making to Cocoa, and instead want to follow the old, stagnant OPENSTEP standard. There really isn't anything stopping anyone from developing a Cocoa-alike for another OS, look at Mono, they're re-implementing an entire runtime and standard library. If you want to get something like that going, be my guest! Go for it!

Also, one thing I'd like to note: An OS X application would look and feel really out of place on Windows. I think that if, hypothetically, a Windows or Linux port was done, we'd want to stick to the native UI metaphors to that platform.

So, really, there's absolutely zero chance we'd ever have enough manpower or interest in the foreseeable future to port to Linux or Windows.

honigbaer · Post by **honigbaer** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 10:33 pm

i agree that there's absolutely no reason to port adium to another os, since for windows there's miranda im, still the best client in my opinion and for linux we got kopete, licq etc.
that's why i think the devs should concentrate on making adium even better although it's already the best icq client i can think of for os x!

Post by **The_Tick** » Sun Mar 05, 2006 12:25 am

cbarrett wrote:The real difficulty in porting Adium to another OS lies in GNUStep. They are very reluctant to adopt the new changes Apple is making to Cocoa, and instead want to follow the old, stagnant OPENSTEP standard.

apparently some of this mentality is changing, or at least that's what I've heard.

Post by **The_Tick** » Sun Mar 05, 2006 9:00 am

honigbaer wrote:there's miranda im, still the best client in my opinion

You meant for Windows and not all platforms right? Because I couldn't stand it at all

honigbaer · Post by **honigbaer** » Sun Mar 05, 2006 2:20 pm

The_Tick wrote:
honigbaer wrote:there's miranda im, still the best client in my opinion
You meant for Windows and not all platforms right? Because I couldn't stand it at all

yeah, sure! i wrote "for windows there's miranda im..." above.
it's the only app i actually do miss just because of the status message problem with libgaim.