Proposed improvements to the separate compilation model

[Mike Wey]

On 07/23/2011 11:54 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> The problem with this setup is that it's extremely fragile, in ways that
> are undetectable during compilation or runtime. For example, just
> swapping a and b in the implementation file makes the program print
> "08.96566e-31344". Similar issues occur if fields or methods are added
> or removed from one file but not the other.
>
> In an attempt to fix this, the developers may add an "import a" to a.d,
> thinking that the compiler would import a.di and would verify the bodies
> of the two classes for correspondence. That doesn't work - the compiler
> simply ignores the import. Things can be tenuously arranged such that
> the .d file and the .di file have different names, but in that case the
> compiler complains about duplicate definitions.

If the .di files are this fragile, the compiler should just always check 
if the .d file matches (if present) .di file, then there is no need for 
the extra import.

-- 
Mike Wey