Compile time executable calling?

[Tofu Ninja]

On Friday, 12 July 2013 at 22:36:22 UTC, Peter Alexander wrote:
> On Friday, 12 July 2013 at 20:42:50 UTC, Tofu Ninja wrote:
>> So I had an idea recently, wouldn't it be cool to have the 
>> ability to call an executable at compile time and capture its 
>> output.
>
> How long until D compilers are able to read mail? :-)
>
> There's many obvious applications of this proposed feature, but 
> I say such things should be delegated to the build process. 
> Just run those executables using a makefile, or whatever build 
> system you use.
>
> If you need compile time inputs from your D code then just run 
> a separate build to extract them. Yes it's more work and less 
> convenient, but I think we need to be careful with how much is 
> added to the D compilers. We don't want to turn them into 
> operating systems.

I think this is in line with what you want though, it allows the 
things that really should be separate to be separate in another 
executable, the only thing that it is really bring into the 
language is that you wont have to rely on a makefile as much, 
which in my opinion is a good thing.