Practical Problems with distribution D projects

[Adam D. Ruppe]

On Tuesday, 25 February 2014 at 01:21:03 UTC, Assaf Gordon wrote:
> dmd: fine, as long as the downloadable binary version works. I 
> tested only on multiple debians and ubuntus. But it's not free, 
> and it requires root privileges.

dmd does not require root. The install instructions about copying 
stuff into /etc and such are ridiculously overcomplicated - dmd 
actually just works* if you run it straight out of the zip as any 
regular user in any location.

* if the binary works on your distro, sometimes there's a version 
mismatch forcing you to build it yourself. That's not a hard 
thing to do either, the source is included and you can just make 
it as a regular user, but an extra step doesn't do 'just works'.

> But it looks like it's only possible to compile 
> dynamically-linked binaries.

This is more of a Linux problem than a D one. But most D programs 
will work normally, dynamically linking the C library *usually* 
works and that's all a D app really needs.

If you want more binary compatibility btw I'd say stick to 
building Windows exes, they almost always just work, even on 
Linux with wine.