Does D have too many features?

[Alex Rønne Petersen]

On 30-04-2012 11:46, SomeDude wrote:
> On Monday, 30 April 2012 at 03:16:57 UTC, Alex Rønne Petersen wrote:
>>
>> The problem with D's unit test support is that it doesn't integrate
>> well into real world build processes. I usually have debug and release
>> configurations, and that's it. No test configuration; not only does
>> that over-complicate things, but it also isn't really useful. I want
>> my unit testing to be exhaustive; i.e. I want to test my code in debug
>> and release builds, because those are the builds people are going to
>> be using. Not a test build.
>>
>> So, this means that writing unit tests inline is a no-go because that
>> would require either always building with unit tests in all
>> configurations (madness) or having a test configuration (see above).
>>
>> Given the above, I've resorted to having a "tester" executable which
>> links in all libraries in my project and tests every module. This
>> means that I have to write my unit tests inside this helper
>> executable, making much of the gain in D's unittest blocks go away.
>>
>> And no, the fact that I link libraries into the helper executable
>> doesn't mean that I can just write the unit tests in the libraries in
>> the first place. Doing so would require building them twice: Once for
>> the normal build and once for the "tester" executable.
>>
>
> OK, that makes sense. What a test framework could do, although it's kind
> of ugly, is first copy the unittest() sections into separate test files,
> compile them and then link with the tested module code.
> You would keep the advantage of having test code close to source code,
> and still compile the real code without -unittest switch.
>
>> (And yes, build times matter when your project gets large enough, even
>> in D.)
>
> Just for information, how big is your project (how many files), and how
> long does a full build take ? I have no idea how fast the compiler
> really is (is it GDC or DMD you are using ?).

I don't have a clone of my repo from where I am now, so I can't count, 
but it usually takes around ~30 seconds with DMD, ~2 minutes with GDC.

-- 
- Alex