GNUstep Objective-C Runtime 2.0
===============================

This the second major release of the GNUstep Objective-C runtime (a.k.a.
libobjc2).  This runtime was designed to support the features of modern
dialects of Objective-C for use with GNUstep and other Objective-C programs.

This release introduces a new Objective-C ABI, which is designed to be forward
compatible with future changes and removes a large number of hacks that were
required for compatibility with the prior ABI that included features introduced
in the 1980s.

The runtime will now use the new ABI's data structures internally and will
automatically upgrade on-disk structures from old ABIs when used with the old
ABI.  As a result, memory usage will be higher when using the old ABI and users
who are unable to recompile their code may prefer to stick with the 1.9.x
release series.  Mixing libraries compiled with the old and new ABIs is not
supported and will abort at run time.

The new ABI provides better run-time introspection metadata and smaller
binaries.  When used with the new ABI, this version of the runtime will consume
less memory than the previous release.

You may obtain the code for this release from git and use the 2.0 branch:

https://github.com/gnustep/libobjc2.git

Alternatively, a tarball is available from:

https://github.com/gnustep/libobjc2/archive/v2.0.zip
https://github.com/gnustep/libobjc2/archive/v2.0.tar.gz

The runtime library is responsible for implementing the core features of the
object model, as well as exposing introspection features to the user.  The
GNUstep runtime implements a superset of Apple's Objective-C Runtime APIs.

If you come across any problems, please file them in the issue tracker:

https://github.com/gnustep/libobjc2/issues