AST files instead of DI interface files for faster compilation and easier distribution

[Timon Gehr]

On 06/12/2012 03:54 PM, deadalnix wrote:
> Le 12/06/2012 12:23, Tobias Pankrath a écrit :
>> Currently .di-files are compiler independent. If this should hold for
>> dib-files, too, we'll need a standard ast structure, won't we?
>>
>
> We need it anyway at some point.

Plain D code is already a perfectly fine standard AST structure.

>  AST macro is another example.
>

AST macros may refer to AST structures by their representations as D code.

> It would also greatly simplify compiler writing if the D interpreter
> could be provided as lib (and so run on top of dib file).
>

I don't think so. Writing the interpreter is a rather straightforward 
part of the compiler implementation. Why would you want to run it on top 
of a '.dib' file anyway? Serializing/deserializing the AST is too much 
overhead.

> I want to mention that LLVM IR + metadata can do a really good job here.
> In addition, LLVM people are working on a JIT backend, if you know what
> I mean ;)

Interpreting manually is not harder than CTFE-compatible LLVM IR code 
generation, but the LLVM JIT could certainly be leveraged to improve 
compilation speeds.