OpenBSD port of dmd?

[Tove]

On Sunday, 18 March 2012 at 18:09:42 UTC, Peter Alexander wrote:
> On Saturday, 17 March 2012 at 01:37:49 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
> wrote:
>>>> This seems to accomplish little more than "well I didn't use 
>>>> else".
>>>>
>>>> Again: what exactly is wrong with specialization?
>>>>
>>>
>>> The advantage is, that when you write the code, you have _no 
>>> idea_ what
>>> platform/os it might need to run on in the future.  You 
>>> _cannot_ know which
>>> version is most appropriate for _all_ new platforms, or even 
>>> if any of them
>>> will work at all.
>>
>> Oh yes I do. Often I know every platform has e.g. getchar() so 
>> I can use it. That will definitely work for everyone. Then, if 
>> I get to optimize things for particular platforms, great. This 
>> is the case for many artifacts.
>
> version(PlatformX)
> {
>     return superfastgetchar();
> }
> else
> {
>     return getchar();
> }
>
> Later on, we add support for PlatformY, which also supports 
> superfastgetchar(). If you write code as above then no one will 
> notice. It will just happily use getchar() and suffer because 
> of it. If you static assert on new platforms then it forces you 
> to look at the code for each new platform added and think about 
> what version would be best.
>
> As Walter said, you can't know what version will be most 
> appropriate for all new platforms.

It should be possible to eat the cake and still have it... even 
if warnings normally are frowned upon(with good reason), using 
warnings for this would allow the benefits from both "camps"...

It would allow a painless "prototype porting" for new operating 
systems which are similar, yet... even if it does work, at a 
later point one would still have to go through all the version 
statements and either silencing the warning, or selecting the 
optimized path.