D front-end in D for D

[SomeDude]

On Saturday, 14 July 2012 at 15:18:53 UTC, David Piepgrass wrote:
>
> I think, for multiple reasons including this use case, D should 
> have a "lightweight subset" with a smaller standard library and 
> a somewhat simpler language definition (that retains most of 
> D's power), which could shrink the size of a program that uses 
> runtime codegen. For simplicity, the D front-end written in D 
> could use the same backend for CTFE as for its output. And one 
> hopes that generated code could be garbage-collected.
>
> However, presumably you'd have to include LLVM which I believe 
> is around 1MB for a bare-minimum build (with no optimization 
> passes included.)

I support this idea. This simpler subset would be targetted at 
embedded devices.

I would imagine a sub-D without generic programming and CTFE, for 
instance. The resulting language would retain much enough 
functionality for rewriting a bootstrapping compiler.