Tutorial on how to build DMD/druntime/phobos and docs from source?

[timewulf]

On 29.01.2013 21:25, Philippe Sigaud wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 10:14 PM, H. S. Teoh <hsteoh at quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:
>> On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 09:24:46PM +0100, Philippe Sigaud wrote:
>>>>> Besides the wiki, see:
>>>>> https://xtzgzorex.wordpress.com/2011/07/31/d-building-dmd-and-phobos-on-linux/
>>>>
>>>> Would you kindly add this info to the wiki? :-)
>>>
>>> Where on the page?
>>
>> Ideally, integrate it into the current page structure. Or reorg the page
>> as you see fit.
> 
> OK, I integrated some explanations on dmd.conf. I also added
> /tools.git and explanations at the end.
> 

Hi all,

this thread helped me much, but I ran into some trouble during
bootstrapping dmd, because of some todos, not mentioned in the wiki.

First I will give you a field report, explaining my way, I installed dmd
from source (not really a shortstory ;-)) ..) and then, I hope, I will
ask some not so silly questions.

I use gentoo and installed dmd-2.60, because that's actually the last
version in portage (the gentoo packagemanager). All went ok, I tested
some little d-examples and then I wanted to get dmd-2.61 to run.

Now the trouble begun:

First I followed the wiki, tried to use the actual git version:
dmd compiles, but the druntime and phobos don't do the same. Much
warnings and some errors were shown.

Ok, I'll go the same way with the last release: dmd.2.61.zip

But mostly the same happened, some other warnings and errors, but the
libraries won't compile.

It took me some time to realize, that it was dmd-2.60 that caused the
errors: To compile the libraries out of 2.61 or git, one needs a recent
compiler.

Nice: I found it as binary in the linux directory in the root of
'dmd.2.61.zip'.

Luck: My PATH-Variable points to /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:..., The
portage version of dmd-2.60 was installed in /usr/bin, so I copied the
2.61-binaries to /usr/local/bin without need to delete the old version
before.

druntime and phobos now compiled without errors, but even the tools made
some trouble again. The phobos- and druntime-sources were not found at
the right places. This time there's even a reasonable hint, so I know,
where the sources are searched for. After copying to the right path, now
even the tools got compiled.

Until now I'm not convinced, that the result of my work is a clean dmd
v.2.62 (git) compiler environment or a mix out of v.2.60 (the
gentoo-package), v.2.61 (out of the zip) and the git-sources and
compilations itself.

Why? There's a dmd.conf in /etc, which points to the libraries and
include-files of version 2.60. There's another one in /usr/local/bin
which I copied there together with the binaries I mentioned above and in
the wiki is mentioned, to create a dmd.conf in /usr/src/d/dmd/src/ and
it seems to me, that dmd looks at some default places to find what it needs.


Now my questions / suggestions:

At what places and in which order dmd searches for dmd.conf files?

What files should be placed in what linux-directories? It can't be
reasonable, to set the "PATH"-Variable to /usr/src/dmd/src, to get the
latest dmd-compiler running, even so for Library- and Include-Paths.
Whith next git-update, there will be a newly generated mix of versions
again.

So what files do one need to copy to the standard-directories of Linux,
so that all functionality of dmd will be reachable for daily use?

In the wiki it should be mentioned, that one needs a recent enough
dmd-compiler, to get this stuff running, where to get it and with what
steps to install it.

An idea: Like in the dmd.2.61.zip, there could be a directory "linux" in
the git-repository, with the needed bin-files in it. I would even
appreciate, if there would be the whole compiler-environment with bins,
libraries, includes and sources all of the same version, so one has a
clean environment for bootstrapping dmd2 / druntime / phobos from
git-sources.

My problem was, that gentoo isn't able, to install .deb- or .rpm-files.
That's why I wanted to create it from source, but whithout knowing what
I know now, that was a bad task.

I hope this report points out, what problems occur for people dealing
new with dmd. It's not already a checklist, howto bootstrap dmd, but
this report together with your knowledge of dmd, can help improve the
wiki and the bootstrapping itself.

Sorry, that it got so long, but leaving anything out wouldn't point out,
what I wanted to say.

Thanks all for your work on dmd. Maybe - and I hope so - I can help a
bit in the future and do some of the work myself.

Greetings, Timewulf