DIP11: Automatic downloading of libraries

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Wed, 15 Jun 2011 10:38:28 -0400, Andrei Alexandrescu  
<SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote:

> On 6/15/11 8:33 AM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> I can't really think of any other issues.
>
> Allow me to repeat: the scheme as you mention it is unable to figure and  
> load dependent remote libraries for remote libraries. It's essentially a  
> flat scheme in which you know only the top remote library but nothing  
> about the rest.
>
> The dip takes care of that by using transitivity and by relying on the  
> presence of dependency information exactly where it belongs - in the  
> dependent source files. Separating that information from source files  
> has two liabilities. First, it breaks the whole transitivity thing.  
> Second, it adds yet another itsy-bitsy pellet of metadata/config/whatevs  
> files that need to be minded. I just don't see the advantage of imposing  
> that.

Yes, these are good points.  But I think Dmitry brought up good points too  
(how do you specify that TreeMap.d needs to be compiled too?).

One possible solution is a central repository of code.  So basically, you  
can depend on other projects as long as they are sanely namespaced and  
live under one include path.

I think dsource should provide something like this.  For example:

http://www.dsource.org/import

then if you wanted dcollections.TreeMap, the import would be:

http://www.dsource.org/import/dcollections/TreeMap.d

Of course, that still doesn't solve Dmitry's problem.  We need to think of  
a way to do that too.

Still thinking....

-Steve