CTFE and DI: The Crossroads of D

[Adam Wilson]

On Wed, 09 May 2012 17:12:57 -0700, Nick Sabalausky  
<SeeWebsiteToContactMe at semitwist.com> wrote:

> "Adam Wilson" <flyboynw at gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:op.wd2beab6707hn8 at apollo.hra.local...
>> On Wed, 09 May 2012 15:17:41 -0700, Nick Sabalausky
>> <SeeWebsiteToContactMe at semitwist.com> wrote:
>>
>>> My take, FWIW:
>>>
>>> 1. DI is only useful for those anachronistic corporations who beleive  
>>> in
>>> code-hiding (and even then, only the ones who release libs), which
>>> regardless of everything else, isn't even *realistic* anyway - there's
>>> always reverse-engineering, and with the super-popular JS there *IS NO*
>>> pre-compiled form, and yet non-OSS companies *still* get by just fine
>>> anyway. If you're relying on the increasingly-irrelevent practice of
>>> code-hiding (which there is *no such thing* - only obfuscation, which  
>>> is
>>> exactly what compiling does, it only obfuscates the source, it doesn't
>>> hide
>>> it), then you need to accept that there *are* going to be things you  
>>> will
>>> *never* be able to do, period, like virtual templates (which *are*
>>> possible
>>> in theory if all the source is available, even if D doesn't currently
>>> allow
>>> it).
>>
>> Anachronistic or not, MANY companies still require it. And JS is not
>> exactly D, they attack to very different segments. And most companies
>> don't put anything of intellectual value in JS. But im not hear to argue
>> the morality of the point. Only that the DI generation issue will stop a
>> lot of groups from using D.
>>
>
> My random ranting made it unclear, but my main point was that if a  
> company
> requires their libs be distributed in binary-only form - for *whatever*
> reason - then they MUST accept that there will be things they *can't* do.
>
> Note that's *not* merely some policy I'm proposing that D take - it's  
> hard,
> immutable reality.
>

We aren't talking about hard-binary-only form, most companies realizes  
that's never going to happen. But distributing something in source form  
isn't OK either. Companies ship .NET assemblies all the time, they aren't  
hard-binary, nor are they the original source but an intermediate language  
(although they semantically are, which has given rise to a lot of  
obsfucators). Somewhat this about lawyers not technical people. The best  
possible answer is to embed some kind of intermediate representation into  
the library that describes the API and Implementation and can be  
extracted/read by other tools. But thats a ways off.

-- 
Adam Wilson
IRC: LightBender
Project Coordinator
The Horizon Project
http://www.thehorizonproject.org/