Silicon Valley D Meetup - April 15, 2021 - "Compile Time Function Execution (CTFE)"

[Ola Fosheim Grostad]

On Sunday, 18 April 2021 at 00:38:13 UTC, Ali Çehreli wrote:
> I heard about safety issues around allowing full I/O during 
> compilation but then the following points kind of convinced me:
>
> - If I am compiling a program, my goal is to execute that 
> program anyway. What difference does it make whether the 
> program's compilation is harmful vs. the program itself.

I dont buy this, you can execute the code in a sandbox.

Compilation should be idempotent, writing to disk/databases 
during compilation breaks this guarantee.

I would not use a language that does not ensure this.

> - If we don't allow file I/O during compilation, then the build 
> system has to take that responsibility and can do the potential 
> harm then anyway.

The build system is much smaller, so easier to inspect.