dmd for ARM

Ruben chromium at hybridsource.org
Tue Sep 27 16:30:36 PDT 2011


Hello, is there a chance an ARM backend can be written for dmd this 
year?  I realize this question has been asked periodically going back 
4-5 years, but ARM is turning into a major platform and I feel D2 could 
do very well in this market, particularly with the renewed emphasis on 
mobile performance favoring a native compiled language.  Looking at 
previous newsgroup posts, it appears that those wanting to use ARM are 
pointed at gdc/ldc, but it seems like those two projects are usually 
behind in D2 support.  I think it would help D2 if dmd directly 
supported ARM, even Windows 8 runs on ARM.

I don't know how much time it would require to port dmd's backend to 
ARM, but it may not require much more than that.  Android comes with an 
ARM emulator powered by QEMU, one could probably try the port simply 
using the free Android NDK.  Iain mentioned getting a SheevaPlug almost 
a year ago; I'd chip in a donation towards getting Walter or whoever a 
Pandaboard (http://pandaboard.org/content/platform) or Trim Slice 
(http://trimslice.com/web/models) to work on.  Some estimate of when dmd 
might come to ARM or why such a port is not a priority would be appreciated.


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