stability

Walter Bright newshound1 at digitalmars.com
Fri Feb 29 14:31:28 PST 2008


Leandro Lucarella wrote:
> I think languages will well defined specifications are the only ones with
> several compilers/interpreters.

C had over 30 independent implementations just for DOS before the C 
standard ever came out.


> That's why I think that putting the frontend in a public SCM is key for D,
> and I think to have a complete opensource reference implementation will
> be key too in the future.

The D front end is completely open source, and the front end is where 
the semantics of the language are. Open sourcing the optimizer and 
register allocator isn't going to clarify how the language works. As gdc 
shows, the optimizer/backend is not necessary for building a compatible 
implementation.

Before C++ was standardized, cfront was regarded as the 'reference 
implementation', but it was closed source. That didn't stop at least a 
dozen independent C++ compilers from being developed.



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