What's left for 1.0?

[Pragma]

Craig Black wrote:
> "Craig Black" <cblack at ara.com> wrote in message 
> news:eji8g0$2dpp$1 at digitaldaemon.com...
>> "Pragma" <ericanderton at yahoo.removeme.com> wrote in message 
>> news:eji7vs$2cla$1 at digitaldaemon.com...
>>> Craig Black wrote:
>>>> This is not a 1.0 blocker, but it is a blocker my development.  D 
>>>> doesn't have a good solution for cross-platform dynamic libraries.
>>> Out of curiosity, what feature set are you looking for when it comes to 
>>> dynamic libs being "cross-platform"?  Are you looking for write-once, 
>>> deploy everywhere, some other killer feature, or is just 
>>> seamless/effortless compilation-per-platform good enough?
>> Like I said, full class loading would be nice, but my requirement is what 
>> C++ currently offers.  That is, I can compile the same code on Windows and 
>> Linux and get a .dll and an .so that are linked at run-time.  I want to be 
>> able to use an abstract class to interface to them.

Believe me, I know.  This is *the* way to do things in an OOP-based 
language.  Once I saw java doing that 10 years ago, I haven't looked back.

And to keep this marginally on-topic, I'll add that I never expect 
something like DDL to be embraced by Walter or DMD anyway.  It's the 
kind of project that is really quite happy living as a lib.

> BTW, I didn't mean to belittle DDL in any way.  Sorry if it seemed like that 
> is what I was doing.  I might be able to use DDL instead of an abstract 
> class if DDL worked in Linux.  However, I don't think this is currently 
> possible since last I heard DMD didn't produce shared objects in linux. 
> Correct me if I'm wrong.

It's no problem Craig.  I know you've posted around here for a long 
time, but I couldn't recall (for the moment anyway) if you'd given it a 
shot yet or not.  Plus I'm always fishing for better ways to do things, 
and insight from people who think it's not the right tool for the job.

But to be fair DDL isn't 100% on Linux yet.  Provided it was, you could 
do just what you're talking about: compile once per platform and deploy 
like you do with .dll and .so files now.  DDL will be able to load ELF 
and Ar files much like it can do OMF .obj and .lib files now.

As far as I know, DMD can create the needed file types to pull this off. 
  DMD's shared-object capability (absent or not) isn't a problem, as DDL 
has a healthy appitite for ELF Modules straight from the compiler.  The 
runtime linker does the rest.

Futhermore, Shared-Objects of both the relocatable and non-relocatable 
varieties are by definition internally linked, which makes them 
questionable candidates for DDL's "full-linking" design anyway.  I'm 
sure others will find creative ways to exploit them through DDL, but 
they're not a concern at this point.

So that leaves only one sticking point: the differences in exception 
handling between operating systems (future 64bit compatibility 
notwithstanding).  I haven't researched it fully, but I'm willing to bet 
that DDL could insert a thunk at link time that can bridge the gap for 
suitably coded (read: no OS-specific code) modules.

-- 
- EricAnderton at yahoo