Weak Eco System?

[Benro via Digitalmars-d]

A quick summary trying to get D and a some IDEs running on a 
Windows environment.

Installation of D fairly standard and no issues.


**Jetbrain intellij-dlanguage:**

* Installed Intellij
* Found the dlanguage plugin and installed

Then found out it requires Dub, DCD, Dscanner, DFmt ..

And here the "work" begins. It already requires GIT to be 
installed on the host system.

Then it require knowledge how to clone the projects and building 
them. Several of the projects have out of date information.

DCD required:
"dub build --build=release --config=client --force"
"dub build --build=release --config=server --force"

Forced was needed or compilation failed on different versions on 
3th party packages.

Dfmt required:
"git submodule update --init --recursive" and then build.bat

Dscanner:
Needed dub to build. Its build.bat was out of date and gave 
errors.

After these steps the files got linked into the dlanguage plugin. 
Partially they worked and also gave errors: 
"com.google.gson.stream.MalformedJsonException: Use 
JsonReader.setLenient(true) to accept malformed JSON at line 1 
column 5 path $".

Usability: 4/10 ( Color Syntax worked, Some type hinting worked )


**Visual Studio Code dlang-vscode:**

* Installed.
* Errors on fetching several of the dependances (dcd etc). As 
those dependances did not get installed, most enhancements did 
not work.

Usability: 1/10 ( Color Syntax worked )


**Visual Studio Code code-d:**

* Installed.

* Gave warning to install Workspaces-d. Auto installed 
Workspaces-d. Restarted.
* Gave warning for DUB, DCD, etc ... Auto installed all 
dependances.

Again issues. Code formatting etc worked but no code hinting or 
any advanced features. Looks more or less like a colored editor 
with formatting. Looked for solution, nothing found.

Usability: 2/10 ( Color Syntax, Code formatting worked )

4 Hours work. Discouraged and gave up after this.


Its not the my first time trying to get D working as a production 
environment ( beyond just command line + simple color editor ). A 
lot of times it comes down to different version plugins, bugs / 
out of date with the main DMD version, main git code not 
stable/tested properly.

And its not my attempt trying to get D editors set up in a 
acceptable way. Always gave up and back to C# because "it just 
works".

These steps are too much for people who want to quickly check out 
D and its Editor/IDE support. If D wants to showcase itself to 
new developers or developers coming from different languages 
there is a need for a more unified environment.

------------------------------

My question/suggestion becomes why are DCD, Dscanner, DFormat etc 
not part of the default installation.

* This means that they can be tested for release with that 
version of D.
* It means that Editor/IDE authors can predict where these files 
are.
* It bypasses a lot of issues where people download the "latest" 
version from GIT and run into issues.

Its "Win Win" for all ...