Hi again,
Is anyone using ARC(iOS 5) in their sparrow projects?
It cannot seem to handle the struct in SPPoolObject
typedef struct { Class poolClass; SPPoolObject *lastElement; } SPPoolInfo;
"ARC forbids Objective-C objects in structs or unions"
In the ARC programming guide it talks about structs being too heavily retained.
Any ideas on whether or not Sparrow will support this?
It would be handy not having to retain, release and autorelease with Sparrow.
Thanks guys!
I wouldn't take Apple's strong recommendation as any sort of sign that something should or shouldn't be done! 
There has been previous discussion about ARC on this forum - it wasn't a popular feature!
http://forum.sparrow-framework.org/topic/arc-and-ios-5#post-7890
Daniels explanation of how to work around the struct issue is as follows:
what you can do, for now, to circumvent the error, is to define "DISABLE_MEMORY_POOLING" in the project settings. That way, the pool won't be used.
Yes, you have to disable pooling for now -- it produces lots of problems with iOS 5. As soon as I'm back from my vacation, I'll work on a fix on that and try to add support for ARC, too.
TTStu
Member
You can keep the compiler happy by doing:
typedef struct { Class poolClass; SPPoolObject __unsafe_unretained *lastElement; } SPPoolInfo;
I haven't run into any problems that I'm aware of with this, although I've disabled pooling anyways (see the iOS5 performance thread).
For any update to the framework, I guess the struct should/could be replaced by an object container instead.
Hi Paul,
sorry, I still haven't found the time to properly look at this ... 
... sorry for the delay, I know that many are waiting for this.
However, have you tried the suggested change from TTStu? Furthermore, there is another workaround described in the corresponding GitHub issue and in a GitHub Pull Request.
Perhaps you could try out your luck with those methods, and report your results? The memory pooling should be the only issue that stands between Sparrow and ARC -- if all fails, you can modify your Sparrow copy to remove the pooling code altogether, and it will work. Then, as soon as the next Sparrow version is out, you'll be able to switch back to the unmodified version.
I hope that helps you for now!
TTStu
Member
Also, in appdelegate.m replace this:
SP_CREATE_POOL(pool); [SPStage setSupportHighResolutions:YES]; [SPAudioEngine start]; Game *game = [[Game alloc] init]; mSparrowView.stage = game; mSparrowView.multipleTouchEnabled = NO; mSparrowView.frameRate = 30.0f; [game release]; [mWindow makeKeyAndVisible]; [mSparrowView start]; SP_RELEASE_POOL(pool);
with this:
@autoreleasepool { [SPStage setSupportHighResolutions:YES]; [SPAudioEngine start]; Game *game = [[Game alloc] init]; mSparrowView.stage = game; mSparrowView.multipleTouchEnabled = NO; mSparrowView.frameRate = 30.0f; [mWindow makeKeyAndVisible]; [mSparrowView start]; }
Thanks for sharing your insights, TTStu! I really appreciate it! 
kaplaba
Member
One thing to remember as well, is if you want ios4 compatibility, don't use weak.
From our modification of the code, things seem to work ok, but there are tricky elements with texture loading and the particle engine as they use pointer arithmetic. And as mentioned before the object pooling.
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