No header files?

[BCS]

Hello aJ,

> "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy at yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:op.u157hfkveav7ka at localhost.localdomain...
> 
>> On Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:59:52 -0400, AJ <aj at nospam.net> wrote:
>> 
>>> Since D has no header files, how does one create "a library" that
>>> another developer can use without exposing the implementation?
>>> 
>> try dmd -H.
>> 
>> .di files are D header files, basically used for the reason you
>> specify.
>> 
> OK, so header files can be generated. The thing is though, when I am
> designing at the code level, I start with the declarations (such as
> class data members and methods) and do the implementation (or one can
> hand it off to someone else) afterwards.

As it happens, .di files are just .d files that by convention only contain 
the interface. You can declare a class in a .d file and not give bodies for 
its methods and you won't get errors till link time, just like in C.

> That serves as the "blue
> print" for further development and remains as first level of
> documentation as well. Working with just "implementation files" seems
> to be putting the cart before the horse. While eliminating something
> unnecessary is something to strive for, I don't think header files are
> unnecessary in the development process (i.e., I don't think that
> relegating them to just the situation given with my OP is good,
> exactly for the reasons of usefullness I gave).

I'm not sure what use you are seeing for them. As far as documentation goes, 
In the cases where I don't care about the implementation, I'd rather see 
some kind of extracted, generated documentation rather than a header file. 
The only argument I see for a header/implementation split is if you need 
to put part of a class in one file and part in another and I think that is 
a very weak case.