Shipping the DMD compiler with code

[Colin Grogan]

On Friday, 1 November 2013 at 17:07:48 UTC, John Colvin wrote:
> 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.

Yeah, I guess I can put this in a script that will check 
everytime the program is run if dmd (or gdc etc) exists, and if 
not go and download it.

Thanks for the info folks!