Quick question about target patforms . . .

[Michel Fortin]

On 2010-10-25 07:55:12 -0400, Jacob Carlborg <doob at me.com> said:

> On 2010-10-25 09:27, Walter Bright wrote:
>> Russel Winder wrote:
>>> . . . but they may have been asked before and I just missed them in
>>> trawling around.
>>> 
>>> Is the intention that D should be the language of choice for
>>> implementing applications on MeeGo? If not maybe it should?
>>> 
>>> I guess the same question goes for iOS -- although Object-C and C++ are
>>> the assumed languages of development, nothing in the various Apple "app
>>> stores" rules would discriminate against D -- unlike what they do
>>> regarding Python, Flash and Java!
>> 
>> Yes - we just need an ARM version of the compiler!
> 
> For that we have ldc and gdc. He would also need an Objective-C/D 
> bridge and bindings to the Cocoa Touch framework. Here are two 
> Objective-C/D bridges:
> 
> * http://dsource.org/projects/dstep - More bindings, less complete 
> bridge, tool to generate bindings
> 
> * http://michelf.com/projects/d-objc-bridge - More complete bridge, not 
> as many bindings
> 
> None of these bridges have Cocoa Touch bindings.

Personally, I've found that, even though it works, the bridging 
approach doesn't scale very well because of the insane amount of 
generated glue code. That's why I changed course and abandoned my 
bridge (the second in your list), working instead on making DMD 
directly aware of the Objective-C object model. This way, you can have 
extern(Objective-C) classes and use them as if they were D classes 
(mostly), no wrapper class and no glue code necessary.
<http://michelf.com/weblog/2010/dobjc-dead-end-start-anew/>

-- 
Michel Fortin
michel.fortin at michelf.com
http://michelf.com/