[GSoC 2019] Interested in Baremetal D Runtime and project ideas

[Stefanos Baziotis]

On Sunday, 7 April 2019 at 04:07:43 UTC, Mike Franklin wrote:
> I don't see that Andrei objects much to the C/C++ dependency.  
> Afterall, he recently approved adding the C++ standard library 
> to the druntime: https://github.com/dlang/druntime/pull/2286

Yes, I don't mean Andrei specifically, I mean the ones who
proposed the idea. And even them, not for generally but
for embedded systems.

> And that's not to mention turtles-all-the-way-down safety and 
> purity guarantees provided by the compiler.
>
> I'm not sure who posted the original GSoC idea, so they'd have 
> to speak for themselves, but it appears to be a synthesis of 
> things I have been advocating for for a long time.  It's not 
> really about creating a bare metal runtime, it's mostly just 
> about being able to use D for bare-metal programming in a 
> pay-as-you-go fashion.

Mike, you give informative answers. To be honest, the more
I discuss this project idea, the more unclear what the goals
are becomes.

> Probably the best thing you can do is focus on your proposal 
> and make it great.  I hope those reviewing the proposals will 
> be able to see the relationship and natural progression with 
> Dan's proposal and yours and both will be selected.

Thanks, but frankly I don't see any interest from the
community. That's ok as I (and all of us I guess)
will be better off if I work on a project
that the community is enthusiastic about.

>
> For the past 5 years this has been my experience working on D:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbSehcT19u0

Hahahahahahahahaha.. Honestly, that resonated and made me laugh
more than it should. If I had a penny for every time I got into
a project to do something other than memory management but
the memory management was so bad, that now instead of doing
the thing I was supposed to do, I had to redo most of the
mem management -.-

>
> If you're anxious to get your hands dirty, you can start by 
> choosing a not-yet-converted runtime hook from 
> https://wiki.dlang.org/Runtime_Hooks and have at it.  See 
> https://github.com/dlang/druntime/pull/2508 for another recent 
> example of another contributor getting busy.

That will probably be my first start.

>
> https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/9068 is a low barrier to 
> entry task that would help us out a lot.
>
> You can also start stripping out utilities from Phobos (e.g. 
> std.traits, std.meta, std.conv, etc.) to create a no-dependency 
> utility library.  Basically my "Suggestion 2" here: 
> https://forum.dlang.org/post/qooasdrdlrqdhghjwmus@forum.dlang.org
>  It could potentially serve as a starting point for std.v2 and 
> the opt-in continuum.  See 
> https://forum.dlang.org/post/mailman.7799.1553797857.29801.digitalmars-d@puremagic.com for the thread where that was first proposed.

I will have to ask again about this library, but surely, after I 
finish with the
GSoC proposals, I will give it a try.

- Stefanos