Proposal: DPM, the D Package Manager

[David Nadlinger]

On Wednesday, 2 January 2013 at 21:02:51 UTC, Nathan M. Swan 
wrote:
> Here's my proposal for a D Package Manager. I want to make sure 
> it has a good design before I write any code, so here it is:
>
> http://wiki.dlang.org/User:Nathan_M._Swan/DPM_Proposal

Sorry for being a bit blunt, but: What advantages would this 
provide over just using the package management facilities of 
one's favorite distro? Keep in mind: http://xkcd.com/927/ ;)

The biggest problem one faces when trying to package D libraries 
right now is that the different D compilers (DMD, GDC, LDC), but 
also multiple versions of the _same_ compiler, are not binary 
compatible to each other. So, if you don't want to use a build 
tool like rdmd to build *everything* from scratch each time, you 
need to manage multiple binaries around for any given library, 
one for each compiler version.

As it is actually quite common to have multiple D compiler 
versions installed side-by-side – e.g. DMD for fast iteration and 
GDC/LDC for release builds, or transitioning one's projects one 
by one to a new DMD version after the release – I think that any 
design which doesn't address this issue isn't worth the effort 
over just using an existing solution.

It might be a good idea to have an extensive look at the popular 
package management systems of other languages like Ruby and Node 
the issue, particularly the ability to easily "freeze" an 
environment for deployment (see npm, bundler). The way Ruby 
(resp. rvm/rbenv) handle the binary compatibility issue, though, 
always seemed a bit backwards to me, which is probably a result 
of needing to retrofit the feature over an already popular 
package manager.

David