OPENSTEP
| Developer(s) | NeXT, Sun Microsystems |
|---|---|
| Initial release | 1994 |
| Development status | Subsumed into macOS |
| Written in | Objective-C |
| Operating system | Solaris; Windows NT; Unix-like operating systems with the Mach kernel |
| Platform | IA-32, PA-RISC, SPARC |
| Available in | English |
| Type | Application programming interface |
| Website | www |
OpenStep is an object-oriented application programming interface (API) specification for a legacy object-oriented operating system, with the basic goal of offering a NeXTSTEP-like environment on a non-NeXTSTEP operating system. OpenStep was principally developed by NeXT with Sun Microsystems, to allow NeXTSTEP (like) development on Sun's operating systems, specifically Solaris. NeXT produced a version of OpenStep for their own Mach-based Unix, known as OPENSTEP (all capitalized), as well as a version that ran on Windows NT. The software libraries that shipped with OPENSTEP are a superset of the original OpenStep specification, including many features from the original NeXTSTEP.
The OpenStep API was created as the result of a 1993 collaboration between NeXT and Sun Microsystems, allowing this cut-down version of the NeXTSTEP operating system object layers to be run on Sun's Solaris operating system (more specifically, Solaris on SPARC-based hardware). Most of the OpenStep effort was to strip away those portions of NeXTSTEP that depended on Mach or NeXT-specific hardware being present. This resulted in a smaller system that consisted primarily of Display PostScript, the Objective-C runtime and compilers, and the majority of the NeXTSTEP Objective-C libraries. Not included was the basic operating system, or the lower-level display system.
The first draft of the API was published by NeXT in summer 1994. Later that year they released an OpenStep compliant version of NeXTSTEP as OPENSTEP, supported on several of their platforms as well as Sun SPARC systems. The official OpenStep API, published in September 1994, was the first to split the API between Foundation and Application Kit and the first to use the "NS" prefix. Early versions of NeXTSTEP used an "NX" prefix and contained only the Application Kit, relying on standard Unix libc types for low-level data structures. OPENSTEP remained NeXT's primary operating system product until they were purchased by Apple Computer in 1996. OPENSTEP was then combined with technologies from the existing classic Mac OS to produce Mac OS X. iPhone and iPad's iOS is also a descendant of OPENSTEP, but targeted at touch devices.
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