DIP30, delegates more destruction for your pleasure

[Timon Gehr]

On 03/14/2013 06:59 AM, Maxim Fomin wrote:
> On Thursday, 14 March 2013 at 05:29:25 UTC, deadalnix wrote:
>> On Thursday, 14 March 2013 at 05:12:51 UTC, Maxim Fomin wrote:
>>> ABI, at least partly, is and should be part of the spec. Otherwise it
>>> has some of the C++ problems. And the point was not about ABI in a
>>> sense of adding piece of information to chapter in dlang.org, but
>>> about implementing compiler. I am not enthusiastic about most DIPs
>>> presented recently because 1) without Walter and Andrei approval 2)
>>> without somebody willing to implement it, DIP turns to be a paper
>>> intellect exercise and corresponding ideas defence in the forum.
>>>
>>
>> Timon Gehr and I are working on compiler. This isn't intellectual
>> masturbation.
>
> And without significant usage it is a coding exercise or NIH syndrome.

There's a significant amount of easy-to-implement language features missing.

> What is good in the compiler (brand new frontend?) relative to
> gdc/ldc/dmd? Why somebody would switch to it?
>

I do not care whether someone switches to it, but the plan is:

* Diagnostics
   - Nicely formatted: Yes.
   - Useful diagnostics for template instantiation failures: TODO

* CTFE
   - Working: Yes (eg: full support for closures.)
   - Fast: Partly done. (the implementation is not as horribly slow as 
DMD's.)

* Sane and well-defined treatment of complex analysis dependencies.
   - Makes sure that is-expressions are consistent and unambiguous
     throughout compilation.
   - To the point diagnostics.
   - dlang.org spec and DMD frontend fundamentally broken in this regard.
   - Mostly works already.

* Complete independence of compiler backend
   - (In fact, there is no backend yet, CTFE is sufficient for testing.)

* Easy-to-use minimal wrapper library
   - Enabling frameworks for program analysis.
   - Simple plugging of custom back ends.
   - Not done yet.

* Using the front end in a code editor
   - Incremental compilation. (Change only code gen of the function that
     was last accessed.
   - Display of semantic information.
   - Not done yet. (But the design of the front end will
     support such endeavours nicely.)

* Short to-the-point code. Written in D.

> ...