No header files?

[Yigal Chripun]

On 27/10/2009 22:50, BCS wrote:

> And as soon as you *require* an IDE to view the stuff, working without
> one goes from 'less than ideal' to functionally impossible. I think we
> have been over this ground before; I have major issues with tool chains
> that are more or less impossible to use without a language aware IDE. I
> know there are productivity gains to be had from IDEs and I know that
> even in the best of cases working without one will cost something. What
> I'm saying is that I want it to be *possible* to work without one.

I'm not requiring anything of that sort. I view the metadata as machine 
readable information that is processed by tools like compilers and third 
party tools. The metadata is required to link in a binary lib file NOT 
as documentation of the interface.

>
>> comparing to original source is useless - commercial companies may
>> want to protect their commercial secrets and provide you with only a
>> binary file and the bare minimum to use that file in your projects. D
>> needs to support that option.
>
> I agree. What I want is that your "binary file and the bare minimum to
> use that file" includes something with the public API that can be
> handedly read with a text editor. (Really I'd like DMD to force people
> it to include a proper well written documentation file with good code
> examples and a nice tutorial but we all know that's not going to happen).

that handily readable something is documentation. NOT header files. If 
you really insist you can generate man pages or text files but for 
documentation MUST be easy to navigate such as click-able PDF, HTML, etc.
look at this this way: a lib is a binary file with binary meta-data not 
ment for human beings. in order to know what API functions that lib 
provides you must provide documentation as described above and that's 
trivial to generate even without a single comment in the source.
if you allow for header files that gives a reason for lazy programmers 
not to generate the documentation, even though it's as simple as adding 
a line in the makefile.
>
>>> 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.
>> without proper documentation people will have no way to know how to
>> use such libraries.
>
> If the lib is worth useing, the function names will tell you something.
>
>
and those function names would be provided in an easy to navigate and 
read HTML format. not in header files.