Proposed improvements to the separate compilation model

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 7/23/11 12:19 AM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> On Sat, 23 Jul 2011 05:52:12 +0300, Andrei Alexandrescu
> <SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote:
>
>> I don't think it's an either-or situation. For a variety of reasons,
>> some organizations want separate control of the "declaration" and
>> "definition" files. Inability to do so is a common criticism leveled
>> against Java and one of the reasons for the proliferation of XML
>> configuration files and dynamic loading in that language.
>
> Now I'm curious, what are those reasons? Can we improve .di generation
> to accommodate everyone, even if we'd need to add attributes or pragmas
> to the language or frontend?
>
> It just seems to me like this path kills two birds with one stone, and
> is less work overall than doing both.

Improving .di generation is great. Large projects may have policies that 
restrict changing interface files so as to not trigger recompilation 
without necessity. Such policies are difficult to accommodate with .di 
files that are generated automatically.

Andrei