Compilation strategy

[Walter Bright]

On 12/17/2012 3:11 PM, Rob T wrote:
>> I suspect most file transport protocols already compress the data, so
>> compressing it ourselves probably accomplishes nothing. There are also
>> compressed filesystems, so storing files in a compressed manner likely
>> accomplishes little.
>
> Yes however my understanding is that html based file transfers are often not
> compressed despite the protocol specifically supporting the feature. The problem
> is not with the protocol, its that some clients and servers simply do not
> implement the feature or are in a misconfigured state. HTML as you know is very
> widely used for transferring files.

I don't think fixing misconfigured HTML servers is something D should address.


> Another thing to consider, is for using byte code for interpretation, that way D
> could be used directly in game engines in place of LUA or other scripting
> methods, or even as a replacement for Java Script. Of course you know best if
> this is practical for a language like D, but maybe a subset of D is practical, I
> don't know.

Again, there is zero advantage over using a bytecode for this rather than using 
source code. Recall that CTFE is an interpreter. (It has some efficiency 
problems, but that is not related to the file format.)

There is no technical reason why tokenized and compressed D source code cannot 
be interpreted and effectively serve the role of "bytecode". I'll come out and 
say that bytecode is probably the biggest software misfeature anyone set a store 
on :-)


> Wow, I think that's exactly what we could use! It serves multiple optional use
> cases all at once!
>
> Was there a technical reason for you not getting around towards implementing, or
> just a lack of time?

There always seemed something more important to be doing, and Andrei thought it 
would be better to put such a capability in rdmd rather than dmd.