DDMD and such.

[Gor Gyolchanyan]

I saw many problems and bugs in DMD is due to it's C nature and would
be gone, be it written on D.
But since DMD can't switch to D at least because of LDC and GDC, the
only way to name a D-written D front-end is to work on a parallel
project.
And having 2 parallel projects is absolutely pointless, because
neither one will have enough manpower to quickly develop it and
because there will be 2 unstable compilers instead of a single stable
one.
I guess Walter and co. could switch to D front-end only after all bugs
of D2 are fixed and D2 reaches it's end point, beyond which it won't
get enhanced further (probably this would be the start of a new D
major version).
So, I hope D3 will start developing in D itself (assuming, that D3
will ever come along, since no-one seems to want it to happen).

On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 5:48 PM, Trass3r <un at known.com> wrote:
> Am 28.09.2011, 15:09 Uhr, schrieb Gor Gyolchanyan
> <gor.f.gyolchanyan at gmail.com>:
>
>> I know, this has been discussed earlier, but i don't quite understand
>> the real reason why isn't DMD's front-end being written in D.
>> Existing DDMD is pointless (and i think abandoned), because it's just
>> a plain rewrite with the same C-style constructs and completely
>> rewriting it to be a correct D code would mean being unable to get the
>> bug-fixes on DMD.
>
> Yep, it's pointless cause it inherits all of dmd's quirks.
> Rewriting most of ddmd to overcome dmd's design flaws would be overkill.
> Also keeping in sync with dmd is hard since there is no way of auto-applying
> patches. Everything has to be done by hand and believe me, it's not fun.
>
> I think dmd should keep going its way and provide a base..
> (remember that it also provides a base for gdc/ldc. If dmd switched to D
> there would also be no updates for LDC and GDC anymore)
>
> ..for a future new frontend written from scratch in D with a proper design
> that isn't restricted to a single application (i.e. compiler),
> similar to Clang but properly implemented. Clang drifted away from its
> goals, especially the "easily hackable" one.
>
> Unfortunately there is no such project yet.
> Dil is quite nice, but it's D1 and GPL.
>