D vs Java

[pragma]

In article <dvs41e$1ae5$1 at digitaldaemon.com>, Sean Kelly says...
>
>pragma wrote:
>> In article <dvrrca$103i$1 at digitaldaemon.com>, Don Clugston says...
>>> In digitalmars.com digitalmars.D:35128, Walter said of the difference in 
>>> reals between Linux and Windows:
>>>
>>>>> pragma's DDL lets you (to some extent) mix Linux and Windows .objs.
>>>>> Eventually, we may need some way to deal with the different padding.
>>> I think it's a pipe dream to expect to be able to mix obj files between
>>> operating systems. The 96 bit thing is far from the only difference.
>>>
>> 
>> I read Walter's remark, and it came to me like a shot from the blue.
>> 
>>> Now, he's quite knowledgeable, but I'd love to prove him wrong on this 
>>> one. I find it hard to believe that it would be impossible. I guess the 
>>> question is, will the subset of functionality that works be sufficient 
>>> to be useful? I guess we won't know until the ELF side is working.
>>>
>>> "Compile once, run everywhere that matters"? (Win, Linux, Intel Mac).
>> 
>> Pipe dream or not, I think its worth looking into.  And you're right: the
>> portable subset of features may be just barely usable.  Until we get some people
>> really pounding away on this, we'll never quite know.
>
>For what it's worth, there was a thread on comp.std.c++ recently about a 
>standard shared library format, and someone said that library formats 
>have recently become sufficiently similar that this is a possibility.
>

Ahh, thanks for the info Sean (and for reminding me what a godsend *this*
particular NG is).  Its funny looking at the posts that go back a year or two to
see folks lobbying around a "Module format" or "module include" (read: import)
operator.  Overall, I think we're on the right track with D and DDL.  If any ABI
for cross-platform binaries/libraries/modules is going to come about, it'll
likely come up later out of necessity - so far I've been *anticipating* need
rather than satisfying it.

On an unrelated note, I also stumbled into Bjarne's proposal on XTI which is
just flat-out scary:

http://lcgapp.cern.ch/project/architecture/XTI_accu.pdf

- EricAnderton at yahoo