New User Questions

[Robert Fraser]

Hi, Mike, and welcome to the D community.

> I've downloaded the dmd d compiler for Win32 but I have a few questions about how to use the compiler, before I install it and try it out. How do you actually use this thing? Do you write text files then pass command line instructions to tell the compiler what text files to compile

Yes, see the documentation on the website.

> or is there some sort of IDE that goes with this? Also I've seen some IDEs listed on google for d, can you use in a way similar to say the .net IDE? For instance are all of them just text editors or can you compile it from the program and do any of them have debuggers with breakpoints ect..? If any of you guys could recomend one to try.


All the D IDEs I know of use an external tool for compiling (actually, I think almost every IDE does, although it's more transparent in some than others). I'd recommend descent http://www.dsource.org/projects/descent , an eclipse plugun, but only because I'm working on it ;-P. Poseidon http://www.dsource.org/projects/poseidon seems to be a bit more popular. Both have debugger frontends, but you'll need to download a debugger separately, and configure the program to use it. There are a few other IDEs around (a lot of people use Code::Blocks), just do a search.

> One other question. If I make a program using the dmd compiler does it have to be open source since part of the d compiler is under the gpl or would that just apply to people making other d compilers?

No, that's only if you use the actual source code of DMD (so, yes, for making other compilers). I'm not even sure if it is GPL.

> thanks in advance for your help,
> 
> Mike
> 
> ps I'm using windows xp