Arduino and D

[rikki cattermole]

On 16/05/2018 8:48 PM, Russel Winder wrote:
> On Tue, 2018-05-15 at 22:28 +0000, Filipe Laíns via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> […]
>>
> 
>> Actually, most arduinos use Atmel's chips so most of them are AVR.
>> Apparently, there was some work done to port GDC to AVR [1]. I
>> don't really know the usability of this but I suspect it's not
>> much.
> 
> [1] Looks very old and unmaintained, i.e. 4 years since the last commit. Also
> D (gdc) is now a part of the GCC suite, which may explain [1] being retred.
> GCC has AVR backends, thus gdc has an AVR backend. Also it has an ARM backend.
> Like ldc, gdc gets many backends (more or less) for free.
> 
> GCC is now at 8.0.0, but what version of D is it using in gdc?
> 
> Is a desire to see D used more in IoT projects a reason for more people to be
> interested in gdc and help get it's version updated with each GCC release.
> Alternatively does D in IoT mean "use ldc". Does the LLVM suite support AVR
> and ARM backends as GCC does?
> 
>> If you want a board with similar size too small arduino like the
>> pro/pro mini that has an ARM chip, you should have a look at
>> Teensy[2]. Using D to program ARM chips shouldn't be that hard.
>>
>> [1] https://github.com/D-Programming-microD/GDC/tree/microD-4.9
>> [2] https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/
> 
> Someone sent me a couple of ESP8266 development boards and a ESP-WROOM-32
> development board, the intention being to play with them as MicroPython
> devices. I see from the device websites, they are intended for use as standard
> Arduino (presumably C) devices or as Lua controlled devices. Perhaps they
> should be D controlled devices as well. I guess though the problem is which
> firmware to load to then use as a D controlled device, and which toolchain to
> use with it: Arduino mode has a full IDE/ICE set up. Also does D have the
> library to deal with controlling hardware. How easy is it to build D codes
> with gdc or ldc without Phobos, and without DRuntime?

-betterC and it /should/ be pretty easy.

> Is D wthout Phobos useful for IoT or should one stick with C,Lua, and
> MicroPython? Is IoT an opportunity for D or is it a false direction given D is
> an x86/x86_64 oriented programming language?

D is a 32bit+ oriented programming language.
Modern microchips are this :)