obsolete D libraries/modules

[Rikki Cattermole]

On Thursday, 29 August 2013 at 01:13:15 UTC, Ramon wrote:
> Apologies if this is the wrong forum or even the wrong place 
> but it seems to me there is a kind of tight connection between 
> dlang and dsource.org (to which the following relates).
>
> I can perfectly well understand that any group around a not yet 
> globally known language with a not yet richly endowed 
> assortment of libraries isn't eager to push the kill button on 
> 3rd party/user created modules.
>
> And yes, it sure gives a new user a warm nice feeling to 
> discover lots of available modules (which after all translates 
> to a quick start and efficiency for many taskS).
>
> Let me, however, also share my experience and feelings as a 
> (exited and pleased) newbie to D when one finds out that what 
> seems to be easily 2/3rd of seemingly available modules are 
> "dead, exitus, this bird is passed away, gone, dead, and only 
> sitting there because someone drove a nail through the poor 
> animal" or, at best optimistically pre-early-alpha (speaking 
> with a friendly grin).
>
> Feels like a 16 ton weight coming down (if I may borrow again 
> from Python, here).
>
> And there is another unpleasant side effect: It doesn't feel 
> profoundly attractive to write something and put it in between 
> all those dead parrots.
>
> I'd like to suggest therefore that we begin to mildly weed out 
> dead or stuck-in-dream stage modules or at least discreetly 
> mark them as RIP.
>
> In case someone is interested in what disappointed me most, 
> it's hto2 and bcd-gen, bot of which address an important need 
> and both of which don't look healthy and useful.
> This is particularly troublesome as "make C libs work in D" 
> type tools are essential in any effort to bring D forward in 
> the world out there.
>
> In case someone feels like hitting me: Hold it. This thread was 
> written with good intention and the honest worry that a lack of 
> libs and a lack of some support for bringing in C stuff might 
> turn out to be regrettable bumps in the road.
>
> A+ -R

I agree we do need to deal with older projects. However I don't 
think we can.
Instead maybe we should work towards keeping the wiki up to date 
with notable projects?

With regards to c libraries maybe it would be a good idea to 
implement a shared library function loader for phobos itself. 
That would mean both shared libraries and static libraries are 
very easy to implement.
There is e.g. DerelictUtil[0] which provides it if you want it 
however.

With regards to making a converter for between C/D bindings. 
There is SWIG but I have yet to get that to work well either.
Maybe someone else can elaborate more on this side of things.

I will say this, one thing about D that has annoyed me from the 
beginning is the state of the gui libs. Hence why in last month 
I've been having a real good play around with OpengGL and 
creating my own library [1].
There is also a few tools missing here and there. For example the 
conversion of binary assets to D arrays [2]. Works, but not the 
best.

I know I'm advertising some of my own projects here but I think 
it's relevant to point out my own experience.

Another area that does need some work is database connectivity. I 
did make some bindings to OpenDBX[3]. Which I need to redo as of 
Derelict3 being split up.
I might get that into DUB if somebody wants it.
OpenDBX[4] has multiple database interfaces using a common api.
We do have sqlite bindings in Phobos however and sqlite itself 
bundled with dmd (not zip on Windows I believe however).

On that note DUB[5] is becoming quite "community official" build 
manager.
These packages _should_ all be up to date however we may need to 
focus on that?
Somebody else should suggest regarding this as I haven't got 
experience on it yet. This may solve the issue you mentioned with 
dsource.

[0] https://github.com/DerelictOrg/DerelictUtil
[1] https://github.com/rikkimax/DOOGLE
[2] 
https://bitbucket.org/alphaglosined/misc-work/src/cf15ec6b1e3cf888885128b8ea5c5ce4a07f446f/Tools/Bin2D.d?at=default
[3] 
https://github.com/rikkimax/Derelict3-Extras/tree/master/import/derelict/opendbx
[4] http://www.linuxnetworks.de/doc/index.php/OpenDBX/Support
[5] http://code.dlang.org/