gdc in Linux distros recommended?

[Nick Sabalausky via Digitalmars-d]

On 10/18/2016 07:02 PM, Ali Çehreli wrote:
> I have a friend who has started writing a library in D.
>
> Although I recommended that he should use a recent dmd or ldc, he thinks
> gdc is a better candidate because it's "available to the masses" through
> Linux distros similar to how gcc is. Although he has a good point, the
> gdc that came with his distro does not even support @nogc.
>
> Thoughts? Can you please tell him to change his mind! :p
>
> Ali

The last GDC release is stuck all the way back at DMDFE v2.066, which is 
over two years old. Very few libs/projects are going to still be 
supporting that, there's just too much limitation going back that far. 
LDC had been keeping up much better.

Due to incompatibilities and necessary features/bugfixes, pretty much 
all of my projects have already been forced to drop support for DMDFE 
v2.066, and GDC in the process. And I *prefer* to maintain compatibility 
as far back as I can.

If his lib isn't tested to support up-to-date D compilers (especially 
the import changes in 2.070, but there's other stuff as well), that's 
going to prevent a lot of people from being able to use his lib. So much 
for availability to the masses.

And LDC (and DMD, frankly) is every bit as "available to the masses" as 
GDC. The "available to the masses" just seems based more on general 
perception of "GCC" being a big, major name rather than anything concrete.