Proposed improvements to the separate compilation model

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 7/24/11 4:31 AM, Mike Wey wrote:
> 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.

Trouble is, they sometimes may be in different dirs.

Andrei