Migrating dmd to D?

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

Hello,


Walter and I have had a long conversation about the next radical thing 
to do to improve D's standing. Like others in this community, we believe 
it's a good time to consider bootstrapping the compiler. Having the D 
compiler written in D has quite a few advantages, among which taking 
advantages of D's features and having a large codebase that would be its 
own test harness.

By this we'd like to initiate a dialog about how this large project can 
be initiated and driven through completion. Our initial basic ideas are:

1. Implement the dtoh standalone program that takes a D module and 
generates its corresponding C++ header.

2. Use dtoh to initiate and conduct an incremental port of the compiler. 
At given points throughout the code D code will coexist and link with 
C++ code.

3. At a point in the future the last C++ module will be replaced with a 
D module. Going forward there will be no more need for a C++ compiler to 
build the compiler (except as a bootstrapping test).

It is essential that we get support from the larger community for this. 
This is a large project that should enjoy strong leadership apart from 
Walter himself (as he is busy with dynamic library support which is 
strategic) and robust participation from many of us.

Please chime in with ideas on how to make this happen.


Thanks,

Andrei