Newsgroups, off-topic

[Moritz Warning]

On Fri, 16 Apr 2010 17:28:36 +0200, Joseph Wakeling wrote:

> Lars T. Kyllingstad wrote:
>> The D2 language, which has so far been the "experimental branch" of D
>> and as such has been a rapidly moving target, is in its final stages of
>> completion.  The specification has more or less been frozen, and
>> currently work is being done on bringing the DMD compiler up to spec.
>> When this is done (this summer, I believe) work is supposed to start on
>> a 64-bit compiler.
> 
> My concern about this is more along the lines of: when will D2 versions
> of LDC and/or GDC be available?
> 
> To an extent I'm not sure I understand why, with two great backends
> available, D2 development did not switch over entirely to one or the
> other of these -- though I understand the fact that the DMD backend is
> probably the one the Digital Mars developers are most comfortable with.

I think many people behind these compilers lack the personal motivation
to integrate the D2 front end.
That may change, but it may take time.

Some reasons I can think of:
- it's quite some work to integrate a new front end (there are a lot of 
new features in D2)
- D1 works quite well for many people and is more stable (important!)
- D2 doesn't offer much gain for many existing projects atm. (features 
vs. stability and transition cost)
- not everybody likes the road the D2 design takes

anyway, gdc has D2 support already (but not up to date/DMD), see http://
bitbucket.org/goshawk/gdc/overview