killer App for D? (was: State of D on iOS/Android)

[Johannes Pfau]

Chad J wrote:

> On 01/29/2012 12:42 AM, Andrew Wiley wrote:
>> On Sat, Jan 28, 2012 at 9:11 PM, Nick Sabalausky<a at a.a>  wrote:
>>> "Alex Rønne Petersen"<xtzgzorex at gmail.com>  wrote in message
>>> news:jg29bs$2dm8$1 at digitalmars.com...
>>>>
>>>> Yes, D on Android would be great.
>>>>
>>>> In fact, D already runs on Android if you do some tweaks to the GDC
>>>> build. I've managed to get D apps running on both a Galaxy Tab 10.1 and
>>>> an Efika MX.
>>>>
>>>
>>> CAN I HAZ DETAILS PLZ?
>>> KTHNXBYE
>>>
>>
>> I can't speak to Android, but I know that building GDC on ARM is
>> fairly routine these days. Make sure to build with
>> DFLAGS="-fno-section-anchors" in the environment, but otherwise,
>> follow the normal build instructions.
>> I would assume the same would apply when building a cross compiler for
>> ARM (although the normal build instructions are just a bit harder).
> 
> http://interaxiom.blogspot.com/2011/08/android-d-stuff.html
> See my post there for an example of a "routine" GDC on ARM cross
> compiler build not working.  It's the second comment.

GDC on Android is not the same as a GDC/ARM cross compiler. The android NDK 
has complicated build scripts to build the compiler and there is no 
documentation how to add another language like D to the ndk. Someone has to 
look into that first.

So:
* GDC on ARM, native compiler:
  easy (use -fno-section-anchors),
  fixing -f-section-anchors: not as easy
  ( https://bitbucket.org/goshawk/gdc/issue/120/fsection-anchors-broken-on-
arm )
* GDC on ARM, cross compiler
  use -fno-section-anchors, shouldn't be more difficult than building a gcc 
  cross compiler (which already sucks)
* GDC on Android:
  Need to integrate with the android build system
  Android uses a different C library, you'll probably have to adjust 
  druntime and phobos. Also some libraries might not be available on Android 
  (libdl)
> 
> Building GCC cross-compilers at all is a huge pain in the ass.  I gave
> up on trying for my Android GDC build for the time being because I don't
> have infinite hours to mess with that stuff.
> 
> Binaries please.