I really don't understand DUB

[Ron Tarrant]

On Monday, 8 April 2019 at 19:54:28 UTC, WhatMeWorry wrote:
> I've been trying to troubleshoot a DUB issue for two days now 
> and I've come to the conclusion, I don't really understand DUB 
> and I'm tired of muddling through.

Just so you know who I am and what my experience is:

I've only been using D for a few months and so far, I've only 
dabbled in dub. I used to write a blog for PHP-GTK years ago, but 
now I'm writing one based on GtkD.

I was asked early on why I'm not using dub and the short answer 
is: I don't understand it (either).

Today I decided I'd get back to my notes on dub (which is leading 
to a blog post on how to use it) but during a search, I turned up 
a thread on here talking about how dub needs an overhaul... or at 
least, a tune-up.

But I carried on anyway and did a few more experiments with dub. 
However, I ran into a mystery while compiling one of my GtkD test 
files...

The first time I compiled it (using dub, of course) it compiled 
without complaint.

Then I decided to see if I could change the name of the central 
source file from app.d to main.d and added a line to the dub.sdl 
file like this:

mainSourceFile "main.d"

After attempting to compile and realizing this was wrong, I read 
the docs on .sdl files and found that all I had to do is change 
the name of the file. No mention of this change is needed in 
dub.sdl.

So, I tried that and got the warning:

warning LNK4255: library contain multiple objects of the same 
name; linking object as if no debug info

So, I changed it all back to the way it was, but still got the 
warning.

And this warning also comes up whenever I try to compile a 
single-file dub project (where the sdl args are framed in /+ +/ 
at the top of file.d).

At that point, with this mystery warning, the talk of dub needing 
an overhaul, and the number of new-ish D programmers who just 
don't understand dub, I decided to, once again, put my blog post 
on dub on the back burner.

All this to say: I feel your pain and hope you can find a way to 
keep on keeping on, with or without dub.