Standard Library Concerns (Phobos / Tango)

[Bill Baxter]

Sjoerd van Leent wrote:
> Walter Bright Wrote:
> 
>> What I see as the goal for Phobos/Tango is for there to be a compatible 
>> core, so that users can mix/match what they need from either library.
> 
> To be frank, I don't see the problem in having two standard libraries. However, their purpose can be quite different.
> 
> The Phobos library to me appears to be minimalist and ideal for those who need a small runtime library, such as example drivers, embedded systems, thin clients, etc.
> 
> The Tango library on the other hand appears to be much more of a library for bigger applications, and provides a lot of practical functionality which todays applications need, such as webservers, database I/O, etc.
> 
> This is a logical outcome, because D although being a system language, can be used in places where VM'd languages are used at the moment but also can be used for those C applications we need to have the machine going in the first place.
> 
> Regards,
> Sjoerd

People seem to forget that C++ really has multiple "standard" libraries 
too: the one inherited from C, the C++ native one (STL/iostreams), and 
then Boost.  Then on top of that just about every single GUI toolkit has 
its own set of utility classes because first off templates were 
extremely unreliably when most of the GUI projects were started, and 
second the official standard libraries try so damned hard to be 
platform-neutral that they are often not that useful for getting real 
work done.

So I agree.  There's absolutely no problem with multiple "standard" 
libraries.  People will use what suits them, and the chances of one 
library pleasing everyone are slim in a multi-paradigm language like D.

The main difference in the D situation is that all those various C++ 
libraries can be linked together and used in the same app without 
requiring modification of your compiler's installation.

--bb