Shipping the DMD compiler with code

[John Colvin]

On Friday, 1 November 2013 at 15:47:56 UTC, Colin Grogan wrote:
> I have a project I may need to write that is pretty performance 
> intensive, but also needs to be quite customiseable.
>
> We previously had this done with Perl, and the customising came 
> from adding functions to a file and the main script would call 
> those functions as required.
> Problem is, the Perl program is performing very slowly.
>
> Im thinking of doing this with D, and using string mixins to 
> add in customised functions at compile time. All well and good 
> I think.
>
> However, I dont want to have the hassle of telling users to 
> install a D compiler on their systems.
> Ideally, the user should be able to unzip this tool and run it 
> with rdmd.
>
> Is it possible to ship the D compiler with the code, and not 
> have to worry about any libs and config files being missing?
>
> I'm specifically thinking about libphobos.a and dmd.conf, can 
> they just be in the same folder as the D compiler or do they 
> need to be in /usr/lib and /etc ?
>
> Thanks folks!

dmd.conf can be in the same folder as the dmd executable. All the 
rest of the linking etc. is specified in dmd.conf so you just 
need to set that up appropriately.

The legal side of things is a different matter. I quote from 
src/backendlicense.txt : "The Software is copyrighted and comes 
with a single user license, and may not be redistributed. If you 
wish to obtain a redistribution license, please contact Digital 
Mars."

Walter may be able to grant redistribution rights if you ask him, 
IIRC this has happened before?? If not, you could just add a tiny 
downloader that grabs the zip file on the clients machine, which 
contains everything you need with no installation necessary.