D slower than C++ in compile time

[Robert Fraser]

Christopher Wright Wrote:
> It would be nice Walter could add a couple people who just manage 
> bugfixes, then put the dmd frontend on dsource.

I think what we really need is an entirely separate front-end (GDC and LLVMDC use DMD's) that would do everything DMD's existing front-end does (lexical, parsing & semantic analysis, optimization, CTFE interpreting, template expansion, Ddoc generation, etc.). Hopefully, it would be clearer (DMD's code is fairly complex...) and ideally it would be written in D, with a simple C or C++ interface for linking to backends. IMO, it should use the visitor pattern, so it could be passed a C++ class that would do the code generation, using D2's C++ interface. This would be easy(ish) to integrate with backends that use DMD's existing frontend so LLVMDC, GDC and DMD could all use it. It could also then be integrated into IDEs, static analysis/refactoring tools, code formatters, whatever, that could make visitors that do things post-semantic pass.

But all the time I have to spend on D coding, I'd rather spend on Descent.

(Sorry for the web interface; I' not at home right now).