Thoughts about D

[Walter Bright]

On 11/29/2017 6:54 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> But even though it doesn't come with Windows, it can be installed once, and 
> shared between all applications that use it.

That's the theory. Unfortunately, that relies on the library not changing. 
Microsoft changes it all the time, hence "dll hell".

> The issue with druntime isn't that it's not installed, it's the static linking.

If the user still has to download the dll, he hasn't gained anything by dynamic 
linking.

> A second problem is that due to the way D works most of the time (with templates 
> just about everywhere), each new release is likely to be binary-incompatible. So 
> you will essentially need many copies of druntime, probably one per release that 
> was used to compile any D programs on your system.

At this point, relying on druntime not changing is just not realistic. libc is 
different, having been cast in stone for nearly 30 years now.


 > But this is much less of an issue, especially if there are many programs that 
build using the same release.

It didn't work for Microsoft shipping a different, incompatible C runtime DLL 
with each compiler.