D compiler as part of GCC

[Eldar Insafutdinov]

bearophile Wrote:

> Jerry Quinn:
> > I'm interested in creating a D front end for GCC that would be part of the GCC codebase.
> 
> What about helping LDC devs create a good D2 implementation instead? It's probably 1/5 or 1/10 of the work you think about, because lot of work is already done, and surely some people will help you (me too).
> 
> There's Dil, DMD, GDC, LDC, D#, etc, but one good, debugged and well optimizing fully open source D2 compiler is much better than ten broken and/or badly optimizing D compilers.
> 
> Bye,
> bearophile

I agree that having such a good intent the author of the post should better concentrate his effort on helping GDC/LDC. LDC took couple of years to become usable, and you have to consider that they took an existing front-end.

Also what I think even when you complete this project, it is not only the licensing issues that are preventing GDC from being included into GCC. They will do that only if they are interested in this project, as it requires maintenance. They will not update GCC-D frontend with every release of GCC just because it is a part of it.

Having a solid GDC implementation you can be sure that it will be included in distributions (Debian had GDC for quite a long time).