What will it take to add Objective-C support to the .NET common language runtime?
.net, clr, objective-c
Solution
Objective-C is a strict superset of C. As such, it's got a lot of features, like pointers, that translate poorly onto .NET. Of course, it may be that -- in practice -- most Objective-C programs are written in such a way that they would also compile against a more tightly-defined version of the language specification that was more restrictive but could be translated into safe code.
Assuming this is the case, the method dispatch part of Objective-C is a natural fit for the dynamic capabilities of the DLR. I've actually considered creating such a port.
Problem
Is it possible for the .NET CLR to support Objective-C? Are there any reasons (either from a legal or implementational) standpoint why this wouldn't be possible? In the spirit of cross-platform application development, it would be nice to be able to write and run Objective-C applications on Windows machines. At least I think it would.