druntime

[Brad Roberts]

On Fri, 8 Jul 2011, Iain Buclaw wrote:
> == Quote from Jonathan M Davis (jmdavisProg at gmx.com)'s article
> > On 2011-07-08 10:42, bioinfornatics wrote:
> > > @sean
> > > if you install ldc2 like:
> > > $ cmake . -DD_VERSION:STRING=2 -DCONF_INST_DIR:PATH=/etc
> > > $ make -j4 VERBOSE=2
> > > $ make -j4 install
> > >
> > > and try install druntime from
> > > https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/druntime.git I can't because
> > > make file is only for dmd. What i try to said, yes we need 1 druntime so
> > > for this reason druntime installer need support at least dmd, ldc, gdc.
> > > But is not case currently. And for this reason d2 can't go to Fedora 16.
> > > Because ldc2 use cmake for build 3 projects (ldc, druntime, phobos)
> > > I need 3 installer separately. And ldc2 use a druntime fork!
> > >
> > > thanks for any answer :-)
> > I believe that it's _expected_ that other compilers will use forks of
> > druntime. They may have to make changes to druntime to work, and Sean doesn't
> > want to have to maintain all of the differences for every compiler. Rather,
> > druntime is the reference implementation intended for dmd, and other compiler
> > maintainers do whatever they need to with their own version of it to get it
> > work with their compiler.
> > - Jonathan M Davis
> 
> Exactly this, and the case is also vice versa with gdc. The druntime reference
> library also does many things that are unreasonable and incompatible with gdc (and
> I assume ditto ldc too).
> 
> One future plan on my list is the restructuring of core/stdc to be more ports
> friendly (the source, not the installed files) - something to help push along ARM
> development for D2 with GDC, and hopefully for other archs to follow pursuit. The
> result being one elongated patch that won't be accepted upstream for sure. :~)
> 
> Regards
> Iain

This is one area that I disagree with Sean on.  I think it's worth merging 
in as much as we can to the druntime code base.  I'm not against having 
separate trees vended by each compiler, but I hope/expect those to be the 
lowest level details and not be detectably different from phobos or user 
code.  Having core.stdc diverge, as just one example, is a recipe for 
having code that only works on top of one specific runtime, which is NOT 
what we want.

I _do_ want druntime to support more compilers than dmd an dmore platforms 
than dmd supports.

My 2 cents,
Brad