Newbie questions. Which Compiler to start with? Real Time behaviour? Has anyone converted CImg yet?

[Ramon]

Maybe I'm somewhat disturbed but I'd rather go the other way
round, i.e. (ab)use D as a comfortable and less error prone way
to create C Code. But oh well that's wet dreaming anyway for
quite some time.

To your questions:

Considering that you are new to D (like myself), come from gnu
compiler world and are doing embedded, you will most likely be
used to and want debugging. Therefore -> GDC.
It's simply the only option that allows for painless debugging.
Furthermore, support by the developer(s) is excellent and
friendly.

DMD is the ref. and is, besides some quirks, nicely working and
uncannily fast.
LDC (haven't had a closer look at it myself) is interesting for
llvm alone.

Right now, though, GDC is what you might want to have good look
at.

Ad "GC": As some pros already indicated, it's possible; well,
many things are possible - but it wise?

I think it depends a whole lot on factors like CPU, RAM, RT'ness.
For something highly RT critical on a 16bit, 20K RAM MCU GC is a
no-go and so quite probably is D.
For a "fat" Cortex M4 or a SPARC (what a beauty!) with RAM in the
MB range and real-time needs/criticality being not so high or
even sporadic D could quite well be the way to go, if only phobos
were completely ported.
Even a certain level of RT-crit. must not necessarily be a reason
to stay away from D, if e.g. one could split the job in a low
layer C and the major part in D with all its strengths and
comfort.

In summary though, it - unfortunately - seems somewhat early to
switch to D for embedded on Arm and Sparc.

Should you learn D or at least have an extended look at it,
anyway? Definitely yes. And if it was only to see what's
possible, how C-like programming can and should be done, and to
better and more deeply understand paradigms and concepts related
to reliability.

A+ -R