### 8.1 GNU Objective-C runtime API

This section is specific for the GNU Objective-C runtime. If you are using a different runtime, you can skip it.

The GNU Objective-C runtime provides an API that allows you to interact with the Objective-C runtime system, querying the live runtime structures and even manipulating them. This allows you for example to inspect and navigate classes, methods and protocols; to define new classes or new methods, and even to modify existing classes or protocols.

If you are using a “Foundation” library such as GNUstep-Base, this library will provide you with a rich set of functionality to do most of the inspection tasks, and you probably will only need direct access to the GNU Objective-C runtime API to define new classes or methods.