DUB - call to arms

[JN]

On Wednesday, 17 April 2019 at 19:15:40 UTC, Nick Sabalausky 
(Abscissa) wrote:
> On 4/17/19 1:53 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote:
>> At the end of
>> the day, it just boils down to (1) you have a bunch of input 
>> files, (2)
>> there's some command that transforms these input files into 
>> output
>> files, and (3) these output files reside somewhere in the 
>> filesystem.
>> As long as you're told where the output files in (3) are, you 
>> know
>> enough to use this package.  What goes on inside (2) is 
>> irrelevant; said
>> command can be arbitrarily complex -- it can be an entire 
>> build system,
>> for example, that consists of many subcommmands -- but a 
>> package manager
>> doesn't need to (and shouldn't) care about such details.
>
> +1, exactly correct

In the ideal world, perhaps. I am just worried opening dub to 
other build systems will just open a can of worms. Packages will 
use different build systems, which will be a pain to set up. 
Right now, the advice is "to get started with D, install official 
DMD distribution and set up your project with dub". Afterwards, 
the advice may be "to get started with D, install official DMD 
distribution, set up your project with dub, and install 
git,svn,meson,scons,make,cmake so that you can build some 
packages. Oh and set these environmental variables for these 
tools. Oh and if you're on Windows you're screwed".

While dub may seem limiting to some, it offers standarization and 
unification. I know these are forbidden words in D community, but 
standards and forcing people to do things certain way are often 
beneficial and boost the cohesion of the ecosystem.

"I find this to be D's biggest current stumbling block, even 
moreso than anything in the language or compiler" - really? The 
biggest D stumbling block is the fact that it's not easy to set 
up a mixed C/C++ project with D? How many projects of that kind 
are there even? How about issues such as crappy std.xml long 
overdue for replacement (I could list more but I don't want to 
derail this thread)?