Mobile is the new PC and AArch64 is the new x64

[Chris]

On Tuesday, 11 September 2018 at 07:23:53 UTC, Joakim wrote:

>
> I agree with a lot of what you say here, but I'm not sure what 
> you mean by "first class support for mobile." What exactly do 
> you believe D needs to reach that level?

Basically the things you describe. I was thinking of a stable and 
easy build system, e.g.

$ dub init android [iOS]

$ dub --arch=arm64

And and of course check which language features work (or don't 
work!) on ARM and write a documentation.

Cf. https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/native-overview.html

The thing is that D already has a lot of useful stuff like C/C++ 
and Objective-C interop. It would be a pity if we didn't use it.

> I think most of the heavy lifting with core language and stdlib 
> support is done. What remains is polish and integration for the 
> build process and possibly IDEs and of course, making sure 
> there are D libraries to make mobile dev easier.
>
> I will be sporadically polishing the build process over the 
> coming months, by getting much more building through dub. I 
> won't be doing anything with IDEs, as I don't use them.
>
> As for libraries, that all depends on what you're doing and how 
> much others in the D community want that too.
>
> It might be a good idea to set up a funding target to get the 
> iOS port back up to speed again. I don't use Apple products so 
> it won't be me picking up that porting work, but maybe Dan 
> could be enticed to finish it as a paid project, since he did 
> most of the voluntary work so far. I'm purely speculating, no 
> idea if money changes the equation for him, just know that he's 
> been too busy to work on it for the last couple years.

That'd be part of the first class support. That a dedicated team 
works on it. Volunteers are not enough. Once it's polished it 
will still need loads of maintenance.