libphobos.so libdruntime.so

[H. S. Teoh]

On Fri, Feb 03, 2012 at 08:28:04PM +0100, Trass3r wrote:
[...]
> Why do people always treat D like a mainstream language? It isn't.

But things like shared libraries that will become necessary once it
becomes mainstream. Lack of shared library support is one of the
barriers to it becoming mainstream (among many other things).


> The chance that one has more than a few real D apps on one's machine
> is quite low. The chance that they use the very same version of
> phobos/druntime is even lower.
> And usually the only ones you actually use are developed by yourself
> anyway.
> 
> I rather have a slightly bigger executable than having my system
> cluttered with hundreds of phobos versions I don't need.

Um, that's what you use a package manager for...


> And you should keep in mind that dmd's phobos is currently 17MB,
> gdc's is 25+5.5. Plus most apps only use a small share of that.
> 
> Making druntime shared sometime is ok I think, but it's just not
> ready yet. See the recent associative arrays dilemma. And the crappy
> GC.

It's strange, I noticed one thing about the D forums, and that is people
keep complaining about this problem and that problem, this lack and that
lack, and it seems very few are willing to actually do something about
it. Like write some code and submit patches. I mean, this isn't some
closed, proprietary system where you pretty much have to hope that the
developers will implement what you want; the phobos/druntime source code
and dmd frontend are open-source for a reason. And hopefully that reason
isn't just so you feel all nice and warm inside. The source code is
there so that people can look at it and more importantly improve it.

Same goes for lack of support for certain features that some regard as
mainstream or critical. If library X doesn't exist yet, nothing stops
anyone from writing it and submitting it for review. And even if it's
not approved, nobody stops you from posting your code online somewhere
and make it available as a 3rd party library. I find it utterly strange
that people would just keep complaining about the lack of feature X yet
it seems they don't want to write it either. If that's the case, then
we're going nowhere. Nobody wants to implement feature X yet people are
clamoring for feature X. Strange.


T

-- 
Never trust an operating system you don't have source for! -- Martin Schulze