ddmd

[Nick Sabalausky]

"dsimcha" <dsimcha at yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:i4pf6d$15e1$1 at digitalmars.com...
> == Quote from Denis Koroskin (2korden at gmail.com)'s article
>> dolive Wrote:
>> > thanksgreat work !
>> > make an all out effort !
>> I've implemented 127 missing methods (958 down to 831) yesterday.
>> druntime compiles for a long time now (producing exactly the same 
>> binaries that
> DMD produces) and I hope that Phobos will be there soon enough.
>> I'd say it is 80% complete but still missing a few key components.
>> I have only tested it on Win32, but Linux might work, too (the was some 
>> work
> done to support it).
>> Keep in mind that it is based on DMD2.032 which is almost a year old. It 
>> is also
> D2-only ATM but I believe D1 support can be added with little effort since 
> a lot
> of the code is shared between the two versions with differences being 
> versioned
> out. I tried not to break anything as much as I could.
>> I'll report more when I manage to compile Phobos entirely.
>
> So when ddmd finally works fully, is Walter going to ditch the C++ 
> codebase and
> base the official DMD implementation on ddmd?  This would be great for a 
> few reasons:
>
> 1.  The PR benefits of having a self-hosting D compiler.
>
> 2.  If Walter is eating his own dogfood, it will give him a better feel 
> for what
> bugs are high vs. low priority.
>
> 3.  If the productivity of D is higher than C++ by as much as we think it 
> is, DMD
> should progress faster after the switch is made.  I have my doubts, 
> though, about
> the productivity benefits of D when you throw legacy code translated from
> old-school C++ into the mix.
>
> 4.  I probably speak for a lot of people on this one, and one reason why I 
> don't
> contribute to DMD even though I contribute to Phobos is because DMD is in 
> C++ and
> I don't know C++ thoroughly.  I know the basic syntax and semantics of the
> language, but I'm not so familiar with the idioms, conventions, gotchas 
> and corner
> cases.  I'd be a lot more inclined to help out with DMD if it were written 
> in D.

All good points, but one problem with moving DMD's official source from C++ 
to D is it would make it difficult to port DMD to new platforms. Nearly 
every platform under then sun has a C++ compiler, but not so much for D 
compilers. Once a good, reliable, well-maintained, up-to-date C- or 
C++-producing backend for D is available (ideally for DMD itself, as I don't 
think Walter would want DMD's portability to be reliant on a third-party 
compiler like LDC or GDC), then that would be the time for DMD to make the 
switch.