No header files?

[BCS]

Hello Yigal,

> On 22/10/2009 00:57, BCS wrote:
> 
>> Hello Yigal,
>> 
>>> As you said, what is needed is a better lib format. we already have
>>> DDL NOW which already has most of what you described above. D can
>>> also take advantage of the LLVM framework.
>>> 
>> Does DDL or LLVM work to generate monolithic executable that use all
>> of D's features and do so for both Win32 and *nux?
>> 
>> Also, can I use notepad to view either of those file types?
>> 
> from http://llvm.org/docs/LangRef.html
> <quote>
> The LLVM code representation is designed to be used in three different
> forms: as an in-memory compiler IR, as an on-disk bitcode
> representation (suitable for fast loading by a Just-In-Time compiler),
> and as a human readable assembly language representation. This allows
> LLVM to provide a powerful intermediate representation for efficient
> compiler transformations and analysis, while providing a natural means
> to debug and visualize the transformations. The three different forms
> of LLVM are all equivalent.
> 
> </quote>

So, if your library has LLVM code representation, then it's easier to get 
to but just as bad as reading a ASM dump from the compiler.
I'm being more than a bit sarcastic there, but keep in mind that 99% of the 
info I'm interested in isn't in the assembly code (function names, argument 
names, types, comments) and/or would be better viewed as the original source.

> 
> IIRC DDL wraps objects/libs with meta-data.
> 
> while it will be easy to get a text representation with llvm (the
> equivalence that is mentioned above) why would you want to do it
> anyway? Automatically extracted documentation to a human format (ddoc,
> javadoc, etc) is much more useful and more flexible - you can get a
> printed manual or an interactive and easy to navigate html, you can
> also get all sorts of graphs and diagrams that would ease
> understanding of the structure of code.

I'm cynical enough that I'd bet if D switches to a "smarter lib format" a 
lot of people would manage to forget the documentation.
With the current system, the library must be shipped with, at a minimum, 
a human readable list of prototypes.

> 
> the only valid IMO use case for header files is for linking libs - the
> compiler can handle just find binary formats for that.
> 

Truth be told I don't use .di files at all because I have yet to need to 
use a codebase where I didn't have full source.