Cross-platform DLL's

[Craig Black]

"pragma" <pragma_member at pathlink.com> wrote in message 
news:e64dot$u1q$1 at digitaldaemon.com...
> In article <e64858$mr3$1 at digitaldaemon.com>, Craig Black says...
>>
>>Compile-once would be very cool, but it is not necessary for my purposes, 
>>so
>>I suppose DDL will solve my problems.  I also hear DDL provides run-time
>>reflection.  I am very interested in this feature.  How does it do this?
>>What is the API look like?
>
> It doesn't do reflection per-se, but it provides the underpinnings to 
> build a
> runtime reflection system (sans attributes, codegen and AOP of course). In 
> a
> nutshell, DDL exposes a generic interface for accessing the runtime symbol
> information for *everything* within the current D executable.  If the 
> linker can
> see it, DDL can see it.  All a formal reflection API needs is to 
> intellegently
> demangle and process this symbol info on demand.
>
> At present, DDL does provide some rudimentary reflection via templates for 
> the
> purposes of binding functions and fields out of loaded binaries - but 
> that's
> about it.  This is about as reflective as DLL or .so files, give or take a 
> bit.

So is it possible to traverse all methods of a given class?  What about 
fields?

>>> Perhaps cross-platform binaries might come in useful for those who need 
>>> to
>>> hide the implementation. But for the rest of us, just having a single
>>> source base that operates on both (without the need to master the
>>> underlying relevant ddl/so mechanics) will be awesome! I suspect it's 
>>> the
>>> latter that Craig was getting at?
>>
>>Yes.  And much thanks to you and all the other contributors that have made
>>DDL a possibility.  If it is what I understand it is, I am somewhat in awe
>>that you have been able to pull it off.
>
> Thank you, but don't count yer chickens yet. ;)
>
> It does work as-is, but there's some considerable work to be done.  Right 
> now,
> communal data records* are kicking my butt and threating a minor API 
> change - it
> seems I'm still learning the corner-cases of the OMF.  That aside, I am
> completely confident in the theory behind DDL and what it will do when 
> complete.
>
> - EricAnderton at yahoo

I am looking forward to the official 1.0 release.

-Craig