The changes announced by Apple yesterday to Mac developers will be welcome additions to Eero as well. NSArray and NSDictionary literals will be especially nice in Eero, as the ‘@’ prefixes won’t be needed†:
Array list = ['first', 'second', 'third']
Dictionary dict = { 'first' : obj1, 'second' : obj2, 'third' : obj3 }
As Eero already introduced subscript notation (using []) for arrays and dictionaries, there shouldn’t be much changed. However, exact behavior may be altered to match what Objective-C introduces, pending investigation.
Eero also supports type-safe enums, and as with subscripts, Eero’s design may change somewhat — although it may simply support a superset of Objective-C’s new enum features.
The other enhancements mentioned should be fully compatible as well.
† Not implemented yet; exact syntax for dictionaries TBD.
A preliminary (very rough) Objective-C interpreter based on llvm/clang’s JIT is now available in the eerolanguage GitHub repository. This could eventually provide a nice scripting and prototyping tool for Eero and Objective-C.
The move to LLVM/clang 3.0 is finally underway. You can see the progress in the in-work repo, although patches won’t be provided until all the features are in. Some seriously-needed cleanup and refactoring is also getting done in the process.
As has been done before, the frozen release (now tag RELEASE_30) will be used. However, trunk is also being developed in parallel for now, but how this will be supported going forward is TBD.
Also, the project (source repo, issue tracking, wiki) has been moved to GitHub. The source will still be accessible via SVN (since GitHub supports this), but at some point git instructions will also be provided.
As is probably obvious, very little work has been done on Eero itself over the last few months. This is about to change, as other pressing commitments are finally settling down. Updating to LLVM 3.0 will of course be a top priority. The iPhone app in progress has run into non-Eero (and really non-technical) issues, but is still being developed.
Thanks to those who have submitted language design feedback through the contact form — observations, comments, and shared experiences are always welcome and appreciated. Please stay tuned for activity to ramp up again.
The end of the beta period has been delayed. The pre-release milestone is now estimated for the beginning of next year, with the 1.0 release a couple months after that. Apologies to those planning to use Eero for any “real” work, but other (paying, family, and other pressing) commitments have unfortunately put pressure on Eero’s development schedule. The good news is that an iOS app written in Eero may be available on the App Store before the end of the year. Details to follow if and when that happens. Thanks to those who have shown an interest in Eero, provided feedback and feature ideas, and built and tested it on previously untested platforms.