GSOC - Holiday Edition

[Paulo Pinto via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 5 January 2015 at 03:33:15 UTC, Mike wrote:
> On Sunday, 4 January 2015 at 17:25:49 UTC, Martin Nowak wrote:
>
>> Exceptions on MC sounds like a bad idea,
>
> That is a bias of old.  It is entirely dependent on the 
> application.  Many modern uses of microcontrollers are not hard 
> real-time, and while my work was primarily on ARM 
> microcontrollers, my previous comments were about using D for 
> bare-metal and systems programming in general.
>
>> Last time I build an embedded ARM project the resulting D 
>> binary was as small as the C++ one.
>
> Yes, my "Hello World!" was 56 bytes, but, it's not only about 
> getting something to work.
>
>> A group of people that builds the infrastructure is needed.
>>
>> I can't strictly follow your conclusion, that half of the 
>> language needs to be change.
>> The only thing I needed to do last time, was to disable 
>> ModuleInfo generation in the compiler.
>
> My conclusion is not that half the language needs to change.  
> As I said in a previous post, the changes needed are likely 
> few, but fundamental, and can't be implemented in 
> infrastructure alone if you want the result to be more than 
> "Hey, I got it to work".
>
> The original thread prompting this discussion was about having 
> a bare-metal GSOC project.  As I and others have shown, such a 
> project is possible, interesting, entertaining and educational, 
> but it will always be just that without 
> language/compiler/toolchain support.
>
> A more worthwhile GSOC project would be to add those few, yet 
> fundamental, language/compiler/toolchain changes to make the 
> experience feel like the language was designed with intent for 
> the purpose of systems programming.  But I don't think that 
> will be of much interest to embedded/kernel/bare-metal 
> programmers, but rather more for those with an interest in 
> language and compiler design.
>
> Mike

Personally I would chose Netduino and MicroEJ capable boards if I 
ever do any electronics again as hobby.

Given your experience wouldn't D be capable to target such 
systems as well?

..
Paulo