Migrating dmd to D?

Zach the Mystic reachzach at gggggmail.com
Mon Apr 1 22:26:36 PDT 2013


On Tuesday, 2 April 2013 at 01:09:59 UTC, Nick B wrote:
> On Sunday, 31 March 2013 at 23:48:31 UTC, Zach the Mystic wrote:
>> On Sunday, 31 March 2013 at 18:31:33 UTC, Suliman wrote:
>>> So, what the final decision about porting D to D?
>>
>> It's not a "final decision", but Daniel Murphy/yebblies has 
>> already made so much progress with his automatic conversion 
>> program, https://github.com/yebblies/magicport2 that I feel 
>> like he carries the torch right now. Please refer to this 
>> discussion:
>> http://forum.dlang.org/thread/kgn24n$5u8$1@digitalmars.com#post-kgumek:242tp4:241:40digitalmars.com
>>
>> Basically:
>> 1) Daniel seems to have this project under control, and he's 
>> way ahead of anyone else on it.
>> 2) The current hurdle is the glue layer.
>> 3) The project is mostly being kept private, presumably 
>> because he wants to come out with a finished product.
>> 4) All I know is, my gut says YES!
>
> Question. Does this imply that once Daniel has finished this 
> task, the code will be frozen and a new major release i.e. D 
> 3.0 announced ?
>
> Nick

I'm no expert on that, but I seriously doubt it. D2 is the 
flagship and will be for a long time, so far as I understand it. 
Also, Daniel's is an automatic dmd C++ to D conversion program, 
designed precisely so that the C++ will not need to be frozen, 
allowing a period where there are both C++ and D frontends. And a 
new frontend doesn't mean a new language. A "D 3.0" would imply 
additions and modifications to the language, whereas the topic of 
this post is changing the compiler.

At the same time, perhaps the fact that the leaders have decided 
now would be a good time to convert the frontend means the 
language is reaching an important point in its maturity. Still, 
there's so much known work to do, plus actually extremely fertile 
ground for new possibilities within D2, that D3 is probably 
considered both unnecessary and a bit of a distraction at this 
time. And yet major versions do exist, and there must be some 
reason they advance, and to have a frontend written in its own 
language is in some way a milestone, so maybe you're right!


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