Should LLVM become the default D-lang platform?

[Iain Buclaw]

On 13 January 2014 05:01, Manu <turkeyman at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11 January 2014 23:04, Iain Buclaw <ibuclaw at gdcproject.org> wrote:
>>
>> On 11 January 2014 00:24, Manu <turkeyman at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > On 11 January 2014 06:59, Iain Buclaw <ibuclaw at gdcproject.org> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> On 10 January 2014 20:54, John Colvin <john.loughran.colvin at gmail.com>
>> >> wrote:
>> >> > On Friday, 10 January 2014 at 20:51:19 UTC, Dwhatever wrote:
>> >> >>
>> >> >> This might have been brought up before but I couldn't find any
>> >> >> thread
>> >> >> about this. As things has progressed I wonder if Digital Mars DMD
>> >> >> should
>> >> >> move over to use LLVM instead of its own code generation and
>> >> >> compiler
>> >> >> framework.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> As I see it with the small amount of contributors D-language has,
>> >> >> DMD
>> >> >> will
>> >> >> never support anything beyond x86 as there are no resources for
>> >> >> this.
>> >> >> Also,
>> >> >> why spend time on recreating the the code generation which has
>> >> >> already
>> >> >> been
>> >> >> done with LLVM? This enables this community to focus on the language
>> >> >> which
>> >> >> is the most important part as well as supporting more and future
>> >> >> processor
>> >> >> targets.
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> > This comes up regularly. It's already been done. Ldc *is* dmd with
>> >> > llvm
>> >> > backend. Gdc is the same idea but with the gcc framework.
>> >>
>> >> Indeed. But naturally I'd suggest they move to GCC.  ;-)
>> >
>> >
>> > Is it possible that GDC will ever produce binaries that will link
>> > against
>> > the microsoft libs without problems?
>> > In my experience, GDC produces intrinsic calls to its own runtime all
>> > over
>> > the place, and it's not compatible with the microsoft runtime. I also
>> > recall
>> > library format mismatch, but that was a long time ago, and I think we
>> > discussed it again since deciding that GDC is now using the same format
>> > as
>> > VisualC in windows...?
>> > Can GDC write PDB debuginfo into the objects (CV8 I think it is)?
>>
>> As I understand, neither GCC nor LLVM are capable of producing PDB.
>> Has Microsoft even release any documentation or code necessary to
>> produce files in their PDB format?
>
>
> Walter did it for DMD. I think CV8 is more or less documented, but he found
> some Microsoft tweaks to the format, or something like that.

Yes, however Walter has *ehem* ties with Microsoft, so he may have
access to information the Free Software community don't. ;)