object.di error

[Johannes Pfau]

Am Fri, 10 Feb 2012 14:12:11 +0000
schrieb Iain Buclaw <ibuclaw at ubuntu.com>:

> On 10 February 2012 10:36, Johannes Pfau <nospam at example.com> wrote:
> > When trying to add a --disable-libphobos switch to GCC I saw that
> > GCC already has code that makes it possible to --disable any target
> > library, although I think this is not documented in the configure
> > --help output.
> >
> > Anyway, this means configure --disable-libphobos works fine and
> > builds a gdc without phobos. Obviously object.di isn't installed
> > then and this error pops up when trying to compile something:
> >
> > object.d: Error: module object is in file 'object.d' which cannot be
> > read
> >
> > However, for C-like code a completely empty object.di works fine, so
> > could we disable the object.di detection when -nostdlib or
> > -nophoboslib is passed, or at least make it a warning instead of an
> > error?
> >
> > Or add a new switch to ignore a missing object.di? It just doesn't
> > seem to make sense, that object.di must be there, but can be
> > completely empty.
> 
> object.[d, di] is special to the compiler, I think it would be best to
> _always_ ship it, or have it separate from being directly under the
> usual /usr/include directories for the standard library.
> 

Yep, anything 'class' related won't work without object.di and probably
much more. But to make a app using those features link, object_.d needs
to be compiled in as well, and that pulls in some druntime dependencies
(not too many), so to ship a minimal working object.di we'd also have to
ship a minimal 'runtime' library. I'm not sure what's the right
decision here, but it'd be great if could make a minimal compiler work
for C-like code with minimal dependencies (one object.di file shipped
by default definitely counts as minimal dependencies though).