Developing a browser (Firefox) extension with D

[Justin Johansson]

Frank Benoit wrote:
> Justin Johansson schrieb:
>> I'm just wondering for a moment if D might be a good vehicle for
>> developing a browser extension for Firefox, or any other browser for
>> that matter.
>>
>> Has anyone either considered doing, or has actually done, any browser
>> extension development with D and have some thoughts or experience to share?
>>
>> Thanks for all feedback,
>> Justin Johansson
> 
> As an extension, there might be more than one extension running in one
> Firefox process. Each extension written in D must bring in its own GC,
> here comes the problem. The GC is implemented in D using signals, which
> are global to the process. So if there are two D extensions, they will
> get confused by each other. This is also the reason, i give up about
> running D and Java in the same process. Also Java uses those signals for
> its own GC.
> 
> But nevertheless, if you want to give it a try, the DWT firefox bindings
> might be of interest for you.

Hi Frank,

Thanks for this very valuable information.  I was soon to post about D 
interoperability with JNI (Java Native Interface), but sounds like as 
you say "D extensions" for Java could also be problematic.  Okay if you 
are the only guy in there but big trouble if your "extension" is trying 
to co-exist with other "vendor" extensions in D.

I am left wondering though, is this a permanent show-stopper for the 
future (technically) or could something, at least in theory, be worked 
out to overcome the GC issue?

beers/commiserations
Justin