Windows 8 Metro support

[Dmitry Olshansky]

On 09.04.2012 20:39, Sönke Ludwig wrote:
> (IMO) one of the biggest obstacles for truly broad adoption of D
> currently is the weak platform support on end user platforms. The two
> mobile platforms that came up recently (iOS and Android) are two
> examples. And indeed I think that support for mobile platforms could be
> a real stepping stone because of D's extraordinary convenience and
> language power - the alternatives to C/C++ are pretty thin here and
> cross-platform development in general has come to a grinding halt
> recently with all the proprietary languages and APIs. If D could step up
> here...

>
> But mobile platforms aside, Windows support is something that in general
> has always been neglected a bit, especially regarding 64-bit support.
> Starting with Windows 8 there will arise additional problems because
> Metro application will only be able/allowed to use the COM based WinRT
> and the VisualStudio runtime. DMD with its use of snn.lib is out of the
> game here, just as the any other runtime library.

Not true at all, in every talk I've seen on WinRT so far C++ CRT is 
still shipped side by side with WinRT. Basically every language has his 
own runtime. It wouldn't be Microsoft if they haven't got a solid 
reserve of backwards compatibility. Simply put WinRT is a major update 
on COM technology and even here it's backwards compatible with the old COM.
The fact that OS API is expossed through this new COM interface is just 
a nice feature. I was kind of wondering when they will finally ditch 
Win32 API.

>
> Right now, if we don't catch up here, D will slowly degrade to a pure
> server and command line application language which surely wouldn't do it
> justice.
>
> In consequence this means that there is one more reason to raise the
> priority of COFF output from DMD (together with 64-bit codegen) - or
> possibly the alternative to make OptLink COFF-capable to at least be
> able to somehow link against the VS runtime.
>
> Another such thing - although this can be worked around - would be
> direct support for Objective-C classes like in Michel Fortin's dmd
> modification. I think these GUI application related functionalities are
> by far the most important things for D's mass adoption. And personally,
> I would even be willing to donate a (for me) considerable amount of
> money to help bringing this forward because many things I would like to
> realize with D are currently (almost) impossible.


-- 
Dmitry Olshansky