Bounty for -minimal compiler flag

[1100110]

On 2/14/14, 8:07, Daniel Murphy wrote:
> "1100110"  wrote in message news:ldl6v6$255r$1 at digitalmars.com...
>
>> I dont know enough about TLS to comment really. Thoughts?
>
> It's probably platform dependent, I guess it should work everywhere that
> C supports TLS.
>
>> Dynamic cast can be disabled.
>
> Sure, but should it be an error or be replaced with a static cast?
>
>> static this/~this is tougher.  If it is possible for it to work, then
>> it should.  I feel that this is more of a language feature.
>
> These might work with init sections, but maybe not.
>
>> similarly, I'd expect scope(exit) to still work.
>
> With no exceptions, scope(xxx) will work just fine.
>
> Similarly, try-catch will be valid, just not throwing.
>
>> profiling and code coverage are fine left out, since other tools can
>> fill the same task.
>
> Yah.
>
>> It would be nice if assert didn't depend on the runtime, but it's easy
>> enough to implement.  conditional, message and  exit();
>
> mmm...
>
>> unittests are out as well.
>
> Most likely.
>
>> All of those are optional features really.  It would be nice to have
>> them, but I feel that those pretty much require a runtime, and the
>> whole point is to *not* require the runtime.
>>
>
> I don't think it's worth throwing out assert over.  A runtime that
> supported assert + Object would be about 8 lines and would IMO be
> worthwhile.

But then where do we stop?
This is why I think it's an excellent idea to have multiple flags, or 
options, one for each thing disabled.

So you can only disable what you do not want.

>
> ie small enough to copy+paste into your main.d
>
>> > Also, D classes will fail to link without Object.
>>
>> I'm unsure how useful classes will be without a GC or the runtime...
>> Thoughts?
>> I'd be fine with then being disabled.
>
> I'll take it you've never seen how virtual functions are implemented in
> C? Classes are awesome.
>
>> >
>> > Should `array.length = x` be an error or just unsafely set the length?
>>
>> Unsafely set the length.
>> Justification:  There is no way to know whether or not you have
>> manually adjusted the array or not.
>>
>> I see it as similar to pointer arithmetic in current D.  Whether it
>> works or not is dependent on the programmer.
>
> This puts us in the nasty situation of having code behave differently
> with and without the switch.  Like dynamic cast, I'd rather it was a
> compile-time error and you had to use arr.ptr[0..newlen] instead.
>

Very Very good point there.  I didn't think about that.  Code should not 
behave any differently with different switches.  Period.  I seriously 
doubt it would make it into the repo either.