The sorry state of the D stack?

[Nick Sabalausky]

On Sat, 06 Oct 2012 13:54:11 +0200
Thomas Koch <thomas at koch.ro> wrote:
> 
> - I looked into GtkD, which refers to the build tool DSSS. However
> DSSS seems to be unmaintained for a couple of years. 
> 

DSSS has been dead for a long time, I don't know why an active project
like GtkD is apparently mentioning it.

The proper tool (equivalent to DSSS's "rebuild") is RDMD, which is
bundled with DMD.

> (Why does every
> new language needs its own build tool?)

Because there aren't any good ones (IMO). They all seem to fall into one
of two categories:

- Something that either *is* make, is a variant of make, or uses make.

- Introduces a requirement of some *other* language. (I don't want to
force people to install or deal with Ruby or Python, and make sure
they're on the right version of it, just to compile my D code.)

> - I looked for a PostgreSQL client library. I found small personal
> hacks and dead projects.
> 

SQL lib support is unfortunately one of our weak points ATM. I could
point you to a decent MySQL lib :/

> - I looked at http://www.dsource.org/forums - most forums are dead.
> 

Like Walter said, the main, active, D forums are right here.

Also, most D project hosting has moved from DSource to places like
BitBucket and GitHub. 

> Is it possible that D is a dead language?

Definitely not. *DSource* is dying, unfortunately, which has lead some
people to assume the same of the rest of D. But no, D is going very
strong, and has only been getting bigger.

> For a newbie like me it
> would be very helpful to have a list of good, healthy projects for my
> first steps in D instead of finding cadavers all around. Typesafe,
> the company behind Scala, maintains a "Typesafe Stack" of active,
> recommendable projects.
> 

We have a list on the Wiki:

http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi

I don't know how well-maintained that list is. If it isn't
well-maintained, then it certainly needs to be.