About NativeClient NaCl

[David Nadlinger]

Hi Pau,

> I would like to know if there is any working example of using 
> Google's Portable Native Client (PNaCl) using the D compiler 
> for LLVM.

Not as far as I'm aware of.

> In case there is no example, I would like to know if the 
> current version of the D compiler is supposed to be able to 
> work with PNaCl.

Well, »supposed to be able to work« is rather relative. I don't 
think there has been any work in that direction so far, at least 
not publicly. But it is certainly one of the interesting 
opportunities we have with LDC, and just one or two spare 
weekends of coding away.

The modifications actually required to the compiler should be 
pretty minimal (e.g. implementing the PNaCl parameter passing 
ABI, which is very straightforward IIRC). However, I suppose that 
some areas of druntime (GC, threading, TLS, …) might need to be 
adapted quite a bit.

> I think PNaCl can be a great platform to be able to distribute 
> programs written in D language. One could just code in D and 
> distribute the app to all the end users with a Chrome browser 
> without any need of installation, just by clicking on a link.

I agree that getting D to run on PNaCl could open some nice 
possibilities. But what is needed is somebody to sit down and 
actually do the porting work – maybe you? ;)

David