D seems interesting, but...

[H. S. Teoh]

On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 08:09:54AM +0200, Gerry Weaver wrote:
> On Monday, 15 October 2012 at 05:27:14 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> >On Mon, Oct 15, 2012 at 07:14:42AM +0200, Gerry Weaver wrote:
> >[...]
> >>Hi,
> >>
> >>I checked it out. There is only a dmd.conf. I've included it below.
> >[...]
> >
> >Strange, I have exactly the same copy of dmd.conf, and I didn't see a
> >problem. I copy-n-pasted your code into the same filename, etc..
> >
> >What version of libc6 do you have? (dpkg -p libc6) Maybe dmd is
> >incompatible with older versions of libc6?
[...]

Hmm, apparently you have a *newer* version of libc6 than I do.
Apparently Debian doesn't have 2.15 yet, so I don't have an easy way to
test this further.



> Hi,
> 
> I was wondering why D doesn't just install everthing in one directory
> (ie; /opt/dlang) and look at an environment variable (ie; DLANG_ROOT)
> to source everything. It seems like it would make things a lot
> simpler. Then the package could be located anywhere and multiple
> versions could be used safely. Quite a few other languages have used
> this approach successfully. Anyway, just a thought.
[...]

I believe the .deb package is simply following Debian/Ubuntu conventions
by putting things in /usr/bin, /usr/lib, /usr/include, etc.. IIRC, /opt
is intended for manually-installed software (at least, that's what the
docs say).

One improvement that *could* be made, though, is to put things in
/usr/include/d/${version}/*, so that specific versions of dmd can find
the right versions of stuff. This was discussed recently, but I don't
remember if a decision was reached.

In any case, I haven't been able to reproduce the problem you're seeing.
I tried installing the package multiple times, upgrading the system
libraries, etc., and everything still works for me, so I'm not sure what
else to say. Seems like there must be some specific combination of
libraries, system or otherwise, that makes dmd not work. Without being
able to examine your environment, it's really hard to tell.


T

-- 
Without geometry, life would be pointless. -- VS