DMD 1.031 and 2.015 releases

[Robert Fraser]

Tomas Lindquist Olsen Wrote:

> Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
> > "Sean Kelly" <sean at invisibleduck.org> wrote in message 
> > news:g3dtv7$1g0q$1 at digitalmars.com...
> >> == Quote from Walter Bright (newshound1 at digitalmars.com)'s article
> >>> GDC has fallen behind and could use some TLC.
> >> I hope I'm not stepping on any toes by saying this, but GDC
> >> seems like a sinking ship to me.  Almost all of the issues
> >> we have with Tango concern GDC codegen or install problems.
> >> At this point I'm very much hoping that LLVMDC or the other
> >> D compiler project (dyld?) can supplant GDC.  In fact, I
> >> think the LLVMDC folks have been asking for help to get
> >> some issues sorted out?
> > 
> > I like what LLVMDC is doing but I don't think using the DMDFE in *yet 
> > another* compiler is the best idea.  It's time that D had a bootstrapped 
> > compiler and that the DMDFE had some competition.
> > 
> > As for "dyld" I think you're thinking of Dil.  I was trying to help with Dil 
> > but with all the other projects and real-life responsibilities, I just don't 
> > have the time. 
> > 
> > 
> 
> We could certainly use some help over at LLVMDC :) The project has come pretty far in the last 
> months, with beginning inline asm support, dstress regressions testing and generally a lot of 
> bugfixes. However there's still a few things to do before we're there.
> 
> Mainly exception handling and some codegen issues.
> 
> Exception handling is a tricky issue. The LLVM support is there, but it needs someone to look 
> at it, willing to submit patches to the LLVM developers so we can get the exception tables we 
> need (and want)!
> 
> Regarding code generation, for the most part, it's complete. However there are some subtle 
> problems that I have yet to track down. The most critical one being a crash on GC collection.
> I've been spend the last weeks on improving symbolic debugging information to make these issues 
> easier to track down. Any help in this regard would be extremely appreciated. So far my 
> debugging sessions have been mostly fruitless in locating the true trouble spots :/
> 
> As to having a D compiler in D, I would love that. If there had been a usable D frontend in D 
> when I started considering LLVMDC I would have used that for sure. However my knowledge on 
> compilers etc was basically non-existing back then, and I was mostly interested in the code 
> generation part.
> 
> I can say that I've wished I wasn't coding in C++ and DMDFE sources _many_ times during this 
> project...
> 
> Oh well, just thought I'd chime in here since LLVMDC could definitely use some more 
> testers/developers :)
> 
> Tomas
> 
> http://www.dsource.org/projects/llvmdc

How pluggable is LLVMDC? For example, if it uses the visitor pattern &
just public interfaces,it might be possible to replace the DMD classes 
with wrappers around classes generated from another front-end 
(maybe even a D one with a C go-between... sounds complex, but I 
might be willing to do that part).