Standard Library Concerns (Phobos / Tango)

[Graham St Jack]

On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 00:44:56 +0900, Bill Baxter wrote:

> 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.

I absolutely agree. I see this as a very high priority.

>> 
>> 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.

That is indeed the problem, and it needs to be fixed urgently.

> 
> --bb