Red Hat's issues in considering the D language

[Brad Anderson via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 21 December 2016 at 16:41:56 UTC, hardreset wrote:
> On Wednesday, 21 December 2016 at 16:30:15 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
>> On Wednesday, 21 December 2016 at 10:15:26 UTC, hardreset 
>> wrote:
>>> On Tuesday, 20 December 2016 at 23:08:28 UTC, Andrei 
>>> Alexandrescu wrote:
>>>> Hello, a few engineers at Red Hat are taking a look at using 
>>>> the D language on the desktop and have reached out to us. 
>>>> They have created a list of issues. We are on the top-level 
>>>> ones, and of course would appreciate any community help as 
>>>> well.
>>>
>>> Is moving to LLVM backend or LDC something that is on the 
>>> roadmap?
>>
>> What does it mean to "move" to LDC? Why can't you use LDC now?
>
> Moving the reference compiler to LLVM as was suggested in the 
> list.

I've never been able to understand why it matters. You can use 
LDC or GDC now. Slapping the name "reference compiler" on one of 
them won't change anything. I think most frontend developers 
prefer working in the DMD umbrella for speed and simplicity 
reasons. Editing and building DMD is dead simple.

In theory the backend should be completely divorced from the 
frontend and people would be editing a libd repo or something and 
there wouldn't be a need for a reference compiler.