D on ARM

[Andrew Wiley]

On Fri, Jun 24, 2011 at 12:14 PM, Walter Bright
<newshound2 at digitalmars.com>wrote:

> On 6/23/2011 9:04 PM, Andrew Wiley wrote:
>
>> So it seems that ARM is going to be getting quite a bit bigger in the
>> future,
>> between the rise of smarter phones and Windows 8 support,
>>
>
> I think you're right.
>
> I'd like to get D on the ARM, but it awaits someone willing to do the work.
>

Well, my question would be what to aim for.
As I see it, the simplest immediate path is to get GDC working better,
because most/all of the platform-specific ASM in DRuntime is replaced by GCC
intrinsics, which are already available on ARM. Beyond there, we'd need
DRuntime support, which is a good bit larger, and we could probably get LDC
working as well at that point. If we want to go a (very large) step farther,
ARM could be added to the DMD codegen.
One thing I don't know at all is what getting support for Windows/ARM would
look like. What with the object file problems we already have in x86/64, it
seems like ARM would be much harder because there are no legacy linkers
there, just what Microsoft is cooking up. In that regard, getting GDC
working better is probably a good idea because MinGW GCC will probably add
Windows/ARM as a target, which would get us most of the way there.

The good news is that this progression is fairly linear, but the question is
how much we want to aim for and what sort of timeline we want to aim on. In
the meantime, I'll be stepping up my efforts on ARM/GDC and trying to get
the GDC running against the DMD testsuite there so we have a more solid idea
of what's working and what isn't (assuming Iain hasn't beaten me to it, but
I think he's been busy enough between 2.053, 64 bit, Win64, and GCC 4.6).

Nick: I actually have a pretty similar reason for first getting into D,
except that I've been trying to target ARM SoC's, first with a Cirrus Labs
EDB9302, then with a Marvell Sheevaplug running on a Feroceon, then with a
Beagleboard. The change that I see coming is that ARM is moving from
embedded to mainstream, so the level of support necessary needs to adjust to
match.
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