Strange fallout changing modules

[Sean Cavanaugh]

On 8/11/2012 1:50 AM, Sean Cavanaugh wrote:
> While working on project using COM I noticed that the win32 bindings
> project declares its own version of IUnknown and all the classes in the
> project derive from this.
>
> So I set out to see the feasibility of modifying the win32 module to use
> std.c.windows.com.IUnknown. This was a bit of work as there are a
> duplicate redefinitions in the project for methods like CoInitialize,
> structs like GUID, aliases like IID etc, but fairly simple.
>
> In the end I had a handful (approximately 10) files that needed fixing.
> The fix was simple: add 'private import std.c.windows.com' to the top of
> each file generating symbol collisions, and replace the duplicate
> symbols the compiler was complaining about with an alias to the
> equivalent object in std.c.windows.com.
>
> The code compiles great, but now the weird thing: Before this change I
> had to compile 13 .d files out of the win32 module. After the change I
> had to add 37 others, and also suffer numerous import lib not found
> warnings because I am effectively compiling dead code that pragma
> includes lib's I don't need.
>
> Can anyone explain this behavioral change?
>
>
> Also, the more I work on this the more I wonder if D should also not
> allow any other IUnknown interfaces to be declared, that are not an
> alias to std.c.windows.com (or wherever each platform's canonical
> version lives). It makes it impossible to easily write a static assert
> in interface containers that emulate ATL's CComPtr: i.e. i have to write
>
> static assert(is(T : std.c.windows.com.IUnknown) || is(T :
> win32.unknwn.IUnknown));
>
> instead of:
>
> static assert(is(T : std.c.windows.com.IUnknown));
>
> and also hope nobody adds another one somewhere else.

I always leave out something important before hitting send:

The reason I had to add the additional modules, was it was complaining 
about ModuleInfoZ's were missing for 5-10 modules (adding 1 sometimes 
added several new link errors).  I ended up having to add 37 modules to 
get the project to link