dmd & gdc

[H. S. Teoh]

On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 01:34:39PM +0100, Trass3r wrote:
> On Thursday, 26 January 2012 at 11:46:19 UTC, sami wrote:
> >my question is if there thing i can do with dmd only and visa
> >versa?
> >what the feature of one of them over the other?
> >what the different between them in term of inline assembly,
> >performance, platform and bugs?
> 
> They share the frontend, i.e. language support is pretty much the
> same.
> dmd's backend is limited both in terms of performance and platform
> support (x86 only), but it compiles D code faster.
> gdc inherits gcc's sophisticated optimizer capabilities, but may
> have unique bugs in its glue code.

gdc also inherits gcc's multiplatform support, together with platform
specific optimizations common to all gcc-based compilers.


> On Windoze gdc is really preferable cause the dmd/dmc toolchain is
> just crap and doesn't support x64 at all. Building gdc yourself is
> PITA on Win though.

Building gcc in general is a pain. It's just a little less painful on
*nix systems, but still painful.


> On Linux the difference isn't that big.

Hmm, maybe somebody should write a D compiler in D. That will prove that
D is a worthwhile language. ;-) You can then bootstrap it by compiling
it with gdc, dmd, or whatever you wish, then recompile it with itself
(gcc-style). All sorts of neat stuff you can do there.


T

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