DMD 1.031 and 2.015 releases

[Tomas Lindquist Olsen]

Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
> "Sean Kelly" <sean at invisibleduck.org> wrote in message 
> news:g3dtv7$1g0q$1 at digitalmars.com...
>> == Quote from Walter Bright (newshound1 at digitalmars.com)'s article
>>> GDC has fallen behind and could use some TLC.
>> I hope I'm not stepping on any toes by saying this, but GDC
>> seems like a sinking ship to me.  Almost all of the issues
>> we have with Tango concern GDC codegen or install problems.
>> At this point I'm very much hoping that LLVMDC or the other
>> D compiler project (dyld?) can supplant GDC.  In fact, I
>> think the LLVMDC folks have been asking for help to get
>> some issues sorted out?
> 
> I like what LLVMDC is doing but I don't think using the DMDFE in *yet 
> another* compiler is the best idea.  It's time that D had a bootstrapped 
> compiler and that the DMDFE had some competition.
> 
> As for "dyld" I think you're thinking of Dil.  I was trying to help with Dil 
> but with all the other projects and real-life responsibilities, I just don't 
> have the time. 
> 
> 

We could certainly use some help over at LLVMDC :) The project has come pretty far in the last 
months, with beginning inline asm support, dstress regressions testing and generally a lot of 
bugfixes. However there's still a few things to do before we're there.

Mainly exception handling and some codegen issues.

Exception handling is a tricky issue. The LLVM support is there, but it needs someone to look 
at it, willing to submit patches to the LLVM developers so we can get the exception tables we 
need (and want)!

Regarding code generation, for the most part, it's complete. However there are some subtle 
problems that I have yet to track down. The most critical one being a crash on GC collection.
I've been spend the last weeks on improving symbolic debugging information to make these issues 
easier to track down. Any help in this regard would be extremely appreciated. So far my 
debugging sessions have been mostly fruitless in locating the true trouble spots :/

As to having a D compiler in D, I would love that. If there had been a usable D frontend in D 
when I started considering LLVMDC I would have used that for sure. However my knowledge on 
compilers etc was basically non-existing back then, and I was mostly interested in the code 
generation part.

I can say that I've wished I wasn't coding in C++ and DMDFE sources _many_ times during this 
project...

Oh well, just thought I'd chime in here since LLVMDC could definitely use some more 
testers/developers :)

Tomas

http://www.dsource.org/projects/llvmdc