[fpc-other] Re: [fpc-pascal] Apple forbids fpc applications on iPhone

[Alexander Grau]

Jonas Maebe schrieb:
>
> On 09 Apr 2010, at 14:14, Alexander Grau wrote:
>
>> If we look at C or Objective-C from a different view, then such a 
>> language could be just another compiler 'target' - how difficult 
>> would it be to add a C/Obj-C target to fpc?
>>
>> I assume all ordinary machine code can be expressed in C too. C 
>> compilers can be good at optimizations, so the overall performance 
>> could be still acceptable. And yes, it would be some sort of virtual 
>> machine, but it's still C code. And a call to a framework/the OS is 
>> just a C call again.
>>
>> I remember there was some similar work on a Java-Bytecode-To-C 
>> generator, making it possible/legal to run Java on an iPhone....
>
> The whole point of the change to the SDK agreement is exactly to 
> forbid doing that sort of stuff.
I think the real question is to what extent this is performed. Writing a 
an arithmetic parser in C code is already writing a small virtual 
machine. Writing a script parser in C is a virtual machine too. And 
writing a smart C code generator can look like a virtual machine program 
... or it can look like an ordinary C program.

I think it depends on the intepretation of the concrete code and Apple's 
agreements are subject to this interpretation.