Proposed improvements to the separate compilation model

[Rob T]

On Tuesday, 5 March 2013 at 12:01:54 UTC, eles wrote:
> On Monday, 4 March 2013 at 06:18:35 UTC, Manu wrote:
>> +1_000_000_000
>>
>> Yes please!
>> It's near impossible to get a brief overview of a class at a 
>> glance in D!
>
> Exactly for this reason, what about make this way at least the 
> recommended way, if not the single one?
>
> What is to lose? As about what to win, basically each .d file 
> will carry its .di file (class definition) inside it, and the 
> latter can be easily extracted (both visually and 
> automatically).
>
> Just one note: please allow that the private variables of a 
> class (those that are not exposed outside the file) be 
> declarable outside the main definition of the class, that is 
> with the . syntax. This will completely make declaration and 
> implementation independent, to the point that the class 
> definition is an interface and nothing else.

This is what I'd like to see happen with modules which seems to 
be in agreement with what you are proposing: The module source 
file should contain everything needed to automatically generate 
and maintain a .di file. There should no need to manually 
maintain a .di file.

How we accomplish that goal is an implementation detail, however 
I fully agree that something needs to be done and it should be 
done without any need to manually maintain separate .di files.

--rt