DIP11: Automatic downloading of libraries

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 6/15/11 3:48 PM, Mike Wey wrote:
> First i didn't read all of the posts in this thread, so some of these
> might already be answered.
>
> In the first paragraph the DIP talks about Automatic downloading of
> *libraries* while all the posts here talk about downloading files.
> This is also reflected in the "Package case" paragraph since the
> compiler / separate tool will first try to download a .di file.
> Which generally is a d import or header file, which doesn't need to
> include the implementation, so the compiled library should also be
> downloaded or linking would fail, right?

That is correct. We need to address the scenario in which a .di file 
requires the existence of a .a/.lib file.

> Also the proposal doesn't do anything with versioning, while larger
> updates will probably get a different url, bug fixes might still
> introduce regressions that silently break an application that uses the
> library.

I think this is a policy matter that depends on the URLs published by 
the library writer.

> And now you'll have to track down witch library introduced the
> bug, and more importantly your app broke overnight and while you didn't
> change anything. (other that recompiling)
>
> To find out how downloading the files would work i did some tests with
> GtkD.
>
> Building GtkD itself takes 1m56.
> Building an Helloworld app that uses the prebuild library takes 0m01.
>
> The Helloworld app need 133 files from GtkD.
> Building the app and the files it needs takes 0m24.
>
> The source of the HelloWord application can be found here:
> http://www.dsource.org/projects/gtkd/browser/trunk/demos/gtk/HelloWorld.d
>

Thanks for the measurements. So my understanding is that the slow 
helloworld essentially compiles those 133 files from GtkD in addition to 
helloworld itself?


Thanks,

Andrei