Windows --> arm-linux cross compiler and lld

[kinke]

On Wednesday, 18 April 2018 at 19:08:50 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> On 2018-04-17 10:55, Mike Franklin wrote:
>
>> IMO, however, all of this dependency and C (C runtime, C 
>> standard library, C compiler, etc...) is all superficial.  
>> With a little more due diligence in the compiler and runtime 
>> implementations, none of it would be necessary.
>
> I agree. That's one case where Go shines. It makes 
> cross-compiling so much simpler.

I don't see a huge problem for the compiler (except for quite a 
bunch of LLVM 'intrinsics' boiling down to a C function call, so 
LLVM expects some core C libs to be linked in as well - so these 
C symbols would need to be provided by a D lib).

Basing druntime on the C runtime layer, abstracting away many OS 
differences, makes things considerably simpler though; with the 
current manpower, I see no way to get rid of it and re-implement 
everything in D, while still supporting all platforms (and new 
platforms to come with as little hassle as possible). OTOH, 
libunwind (or for MSVC, the Visual C++ EH personality function 
used by LDC), libpthread, the math functions (which I'd really 
like to see all in pure D), I/O, memory management...

Considering that we'll be stuck with core.stdc anyway, getting 
rid of the C dependencies won't be feasible for a very long time 
IMO. A cross-compiler with integrated cross-linking ability (and 
a tool to cross-compile druntime and Phobos), shipping with 
ready-made C libs and a preconfigured config file in a Docker 
image, working just out of the box should be a great experience 
for the user (and the Docker image generation easily automatable 
for us devs). I've never used Go, so how can that experience be 
further improved?