xdc: A hypothetical D cross-compiler and AST manipulation tool.

[Chad Joan]

On Saturday, 9 November 2013 at 04:46:14 UTC, Etienne wrote:
> Many vendors would have their processors supported in D if we 
> had
> a D to C compiler. I feel like it would be simpler than going 
> for
> native code directly. Did this idea follow-through?
>

No, not yet I'm afraid.  At least not for xdc.

Here's the lowdown:
The future of xdc will be determined by whether or not I can save 
up enough money to reliably support myself between the time I 
would leave my current job and the time I would be compensated by 
means of crowdsourcing.  In the middle there I would need to 
create some kind of working demo, make a good pitch, talk to a 
bunch of writers and programmer communities, etc etc, all while 
burning precious savings.  If, before any of that, I get 
recruited by another company with a non-terrible (and possibly 
/good/) codebase (like Sociomantic or Facebook), then we would be 
able to consider the whole idea effectively cancelled before it 
can start.  As great for /me/ as it would be to write D code for 
a job, I just don't see it being a boon to xdc: companies usually 
hire folks to work on the company's stuff, not the employee's 
stuff.  But, if I end up sticking with my current job, then at 
some point I may just go out on my own and make things happen.  
Time will tell.

That said, if all you want is a C/C++ backend, then Kai's recent 
post on this thread brings up a possibility that seems 
unexplored, as of yet:
http://forum.dlang.org/post/psqajaggngbuctqfrrnc@forum.dlang.org
Maybe that'll get you there in more certain terms.