GDC subversion project

[Anders F Björklund]

Gabe McArthur wrote:

>>Is gnu-d.org about hosting GDC development ? Or any project ? Or what ?
> 
> I am more than happy to just host the compiler for right now.  Frankly, dsource
> does a wonderful thing, and I'm not looking to poach on their demense.  I just
> want a relatively small set of things related to the GNU -- the rest can be
> disseminated via links to other sites and what not.

What I meant was that it prove to be more successful to focus on GDC 
now, since many people involved with Dsource seems to have understood 
gnu-d.org as being a fork of their own efforts and no-one likes that ?

> I envision just the
> compiler, some core library (GPL or LGPL instead of Phobos), some kind of patch
> to the GDB (until it can get integrated upstream), and possibly some kind of
> extended library.  Really, just enough to get a program to run and debug it if
> necessary.  I'm not interested in much else.  I think that's a really solid
> start.

Actually I think the Phobos license (zlib/libpng, could be any BSD-ish) 
is better for the runtime than what LGPL/GPL. Even the glibc itself has 
a special clause that allows you to link it with your binary programs ?

If we are extending this beyond the standard library, then the wxWidgets 
license is a lot more "popular" than the regular LGPL for same reason...
(i.e. that it allows you to link with non-free programs, unlike Qt Free)

>>What were your thoughts about changing GNU D Compiler to GCC D Compiler,
>>and what about leaving projects to Dsource and just hosting GDC itself ?
> 
> I love the idea of changing names and forgoing wide-ranging projects.  It
> unifies it.  Also, it would be a great thing to eventually have this project
> merged into the main gcc distribution.  I think that's a great goal to work
> towards.

It might be that getting GDC into GCC is a non-starter, if Walter and 
David won't sign over the copyrights to the Free Software Foundation...
Then again, it might be possible to include it anyway as long as it is 
under the GPL license (or compatible, like Phobos zlib/libpng license)

But that is something to clear with the FSF/GCC guys, and Walter/David ?

>>Does it have the disk space and bandwidth for hosting the GDC binaries ? 
>>(around 100 MB per release, and some additional requirements for source)
> 
> At my current subscription level, I have about 1 gig of HD space and 3G/month
> bandwidth (brought to you by the nice people at www.textdrive.com).  That being
> said, I have also just requested another SF.net project page (this is a fork,
> let's be clear) so the distribution of binaries should be less of a problem.

Sounds good, I should have binaries for GDC 0.17 kicking around here 
somwhere. But those are NOT forks, just binary builds of the main...

PKG for Mac, EXE for Win, RPM for Red Hat.

> (Also, I'm not familiar with packaging scripts for Linux distros, but it might
> also be useful to post those, if anyone knows how.)

I've posted several... (search for "RPM")

There are actually two kinds of them. One is the same as the Mac and 
MinGW versions, in that they are as "small" as possible and uses the 
system GCC version - just adds the D front-end and the Phobos library.

The other is a stand-alone version, which includes both of C and C++ too 
and optionally also includes Debugger and Make as well (i.e. the GNU 
variants). This is needed when you *can't* just use the system GCC.

You can also use the stand-alone ("/opt") version if you want a "pure" 
FSF version of GCC, with just patches for D and not any vendor patches.
The versions for Cygwin and Darwin need some OS patches, but anyway...

There's also versions for Gentoo and Debian, but those need maintainers.

>>While the sources are free to use under their GPL license, it would be
>>interesting to all of us if you explain where the process is leading...
> 
> Right now, I just want to get the compiler on the fast track, stick the GPL on
> all its sources, and worry about shaking other things out later.  -- I love the
> GPL, and I'd like to see more D software devoted to it, but that's a secondary
> concern for right now.  We can cross that bridge when we come to it.

The compiler is somewhat derailed, since we are missing David Friedman.

In order for it to get back on track, we would most likely need him back 
or "handing over" the development to a team. Forking isn't very useful, 
it's already being split enough between DMD and GDC development I think.

All the patches done for GDC 0.18 so far has "interim" written over them

--anders