dmd 2.029 release

[Daniel Keep]

Lars T. Kyllingstad wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>>
>> This is a major revision to Phobos, including Andrei's revolutionary
>> new range support.
>>
>> http://www.digitalmars.com/d/2.0/changelog.html
>> http://ftp.digitalmars.com/dmd.2.029.zip
> 
> This is looking very nice! I want to switch from D1 to D2, but...
> 
> I don't want to sound greedy or anything, and I know others have asked
> for this before, but is making a 64-bit Linux version of DMD a lot of work?
> 
> I admit I don't know much about these things, and what I'm going to say
> next may not make sense at all, but here goes:
> 
> x86-64 is just a superset of x86, right? Wouldn't it be possible, as a
> first step in the direction of a full-fledged x86-64 compiler, to simply
> make one that uses the same instruction set as the current DMD, but, I
> dunno, marks the executable as 64-bit (or something like that)?
> Specialisation and optimisation for the 64-bit architecture could then
> come at a later point in time.

I'm pretty sure that 64-bit code is binary incompatible with 32-bit
code.  For example:

struct Foo { void* ptr; }

Is a different size for 32-bit and 64-bit code.

> I know it is possible to run the 32-bit compiler (and the executables it
> produces) on a 64-bit operating system, but it isn't possible to link
> against 64-bit libraries. This means that one has to install and
> maintain 32-bit versions of all the libraries one wants to use, and
> those are, in general, not available through the repositories of most
> 64-bit distros.

This is because the OS puts the CPU into a 32-bit compatible mode, but
it can't magic away the differences between 32-bit and 64-bit code.

> -Lars

The best bet for 64-bit D executables at this point is probably LDC;
dunno what the current state is, though.

  -- Daniel