[gsoc] DMD - Ideas

[Seb]

So this is the second thread in my series to explore potential 
GSoC projects for students and provide more detailed insights, 
ideas, impression and advise for them.

The first thread can be found here [1] and the list of all 
potential GSoC ideas is still at [2].

This thread I want to devote to DMD as it's obviously one (if not 
the) most important piece in D's infrastructure.

The wiki already suggests a few ideas for DMD:

- header generation for C/C++ [3]
- language server protocol for D based on DMD as a library [4]

And there's also DIP1014 [5] which could be implemented as part 
of a GSoC project.

Anyhow, I make a start and list my personal favorite shortcomings 
of DMD:

- better error messages (see e.g. Adam's recent thread [6])
- multiple alias this (see [7] for the last attempt)
- string interpolation (see [8] for the last attempt)

There are a few more DMD goals defined in last year's survey (see 
e.g. [9]), though some of them are too much work for the three 
months of GSoC.

@community: what other features do you miss the most from DMD 
that could be done in the span of a GSoC?

[1] 
https://forum.dlang.org/post/eftttpylxanvxjhoigqu@forum.dlang.org
[2] https://wiki.dlang.org/GSOC_2019_Ideas
[3] 
https://wiki.dlang.org/GSOC_2019_Ideas#Header_generation_for_C.2FC.2B.2B
[4] 
https://wiki.dlang.org/GSOC_2019_Ideas#Language_Server_Protocol_for_D
[5] 
https://github.com/dlang/DIPs/blob/master/DIPs/accepted/DIP1014.md
[6] 
https://forum.dlang.org/post/amiprwpqkkmbdbhaggua@forum.dlang.org
[7] https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/8378
[8] https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/7988
[9] 
https://rawgit.com/wilzbach/state-of-d/master/report.html#180373345