H1 2015 Priorities and Bare-Metal Programming

[Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, February 02, 2015 13:01:28 Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 2/2/2015 6:43 AM, Manu via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> > I'm pretty sure the only controversy is that you want it to be a
> > pragma, everyone else wants it to be an attribute.
>
> That's correct.
>
> My reasoning is simple - an attribute defines the semantics of the interface, a
> pragma gives instructions to the compiler, and does not affect logical semantics.
>
> For example, attributes change the name mangling, because it affects the
> semantic interface. A pragma would not.

That makes sense, though the one issue that I see with making it a pragma is
the fact that pragmas are supposed to be compiler-specific and not part of
the language (at least as I understand it), and I would expect that anyone
looking to force inlining would want it guaranteed regardless of the
compiler. Of course, all compilers could implement it, and with a shared
frontend for most of the D compilers, it would likely be in most of them
anyway, but if it's a pragma, it does seem like it wouldn't necessarily be
guaranteed.

- Jonathan M Davis