SDC & ddmd

[Hans Uhlig]

Are you building SDC in the same fashion as clang by chance where the 
pieces are modular and usable else ware? (such as the parser being able 
to be used in an ide?)

On 12/9/2011 10:25 PM, Jakob Ovrum wrote:
> On Saturday, �� December 2011 at 05:48:18 UTC, dolive wrote:
>>
>> Why do need to re-create a new compiler not participate in the
>> maintenance ddmd ?
>> What better features than ddmd ?
>
> I assume you are comparing SDC and DDMD on the basis that they're both
> written in D. While being written in D is a main point for SDC, it's not
> the only one.
>
> SDC is written from scratch with no other dependency than LLVM. Like
> LDC, it uses LLVM for the back-end, but unlike LDC, it doesn't use the
> DMD front-end.
>
> GDC and LDC inherit all the advantages and disadvantages of the DMD
> front-end. They get the whole language, or at least as far as the
> reference compiler implements it, up front. But they also get all the
> baggage of DMD: bugs, legacy code, etc. The SDC front-end is written
> with only D2 in mind and inherits no code from any C++ or D1 compiler,
> while DMD was built incrementally while D was a moving target. Due to
> all of this, the design of the codebase is fundamentally different from
> DMD.
>
> On the other hand, DDMD is a massive project in its own right. First you
> have to convert all of DMD's sources to D, then you can get onto the
> real task: turning the new code into idiomatic D instead of "C++ with a
> D compiler". And you have to keep it up to date with DMD development
> until DDMD is ready to take over.
>
> It's not yet clear which approach is "better", only time will tell. But
> the SDC project has already reaped benefits from its approach, and the
> design allows for many improvements as the project moves forward.
>
> Do note that as an SDC dev, I do have a bias in this comparison, but
> feel free to come up with some actual arguments for DDMD :)