JavaScript is the "VM" to target for D

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:mailman.76.1272148468.3522.digitalmars-d at puremagic.com...
> On Sat, Apr 24, 2010 at 06:17:25PM -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> "it forces you to use their tool chain the whole way"
>
> Check out the README:
>
> http://nativeclient.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/src/native_client/README.html
>
> Notice how the instructions don't say to use gcc and gdb, but instead
> nacl-gcc and nacl-gdb. The downloads say "source and toolchain".
>
> Wikipedia says that it is simply because the code have 32 byte alignment:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Native_Client
>
> (second paragraph) but nevertheless, an out of the box compiler isn't 
> going
> to work for it.
>

It looks like that's something that's necessary for the sandboxing and 
shouldn't be difficult for compilers to provide their own options for. Maybe 
Walter could add options to DMC to do that (or someone could do it to DMD or 
LDC) and we could see if that would be enough to get things to work on NaCL. 
I suspect the only reason they didn't just simply submit a patch to GCC may 
have just been because of GCC's (IMHO) slow and nearly impenetrable 
submission/acceptance process (There was a modification I once made to GCC 
and thought about submitting a patch, but after hours of digging through 
their site I couldn't figure out the process. The one thing I did learn 
about it is that there are periods during which patches aren't accepted).

>
> Then, once the code is written, you can't execute it without the Google
> browser plugin,

Any sort of natively-compiled-web-client technology is going to need either 
a plugin or explicit browser support.

> integrated with Chrome and offered for Firefox, but not
> available for Internet Explorer. Maybe they'll offer one once it goes 
> live,
> but I wouldn't count on it.

Isn't it open-source? I'd imagine someone could just port it to IE.

>Even so, odds are good that users won't have
> it installed anyway.

Well, that would be an issue anyway with anything along the lines of what 
we've been talking about. Either getting a plugin installed in people's 
browsers, or getting it built into browsers and then getting people to 
upgrade to that new browser version.