version and debug statements

[Bruno Medeiros]

pagma wrote:
> In article <e4069c$2da5$1 at digitaldaemon.com>, Ameer Armaly says...
>>
>> "Derek Parnell" <derek at psych.ward> wrote in message 
>> news:op.s9d3gilp6b8z09 at ginger...
>>> On Thu, 11 May 2006 19:32:07 +1000, Don Clugston <dac at nospam.com.au> 
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Since "static if" is now legal at module scope, it's now practically a 
>>>> superset of "version". So it shouldn't be very complicated to move some 
>>>> of the functionality across. (There's a problem with using 'static if' 
>>>> instead of 'version' : if there's an 'import' statement bracketed by a 
>>>> static if, potentially you have to compile the program to find out which 
>>>> files are included. Obviously 'build' can't cope with that).
>>> And I don't want to make Build be a compiler too ;-) So I don't think it 
>>> will ever try to execute static if statements.
>>>
>> Just a random thought, but what about moving at least some of the project 
>> functionality of build directly in to the compiler; have it compile all 
>> current directory imports and link them together.  If -c is supplied, then 
>> the compiler would compile them only as opposed to linking, facilitating 
>> flexible build processes.  An advantage of this sort of approach is that the 
>> compiler already needs to know all about imports and locations, so the 
>> logical extension of that idea would be to have the compiler act on them. 
>> This is just something I came up with randomly while reading this thread; I 
>> don't know whether or not it's been proposed before.
> 
> AFAIK its been proposed before.  I think the opinion of many was that the
> benefit of having many utils that each do a particular job well, outweighs the
> strengths of a single swiss-army-style application; hence the term "toolchain".
> This also happens to be the main philosophy behind Unix in general, and (IMO) is
> one of the main reasons why the parts that have always worked well continue to
> do so. :)
> 
> Also, In the case of DMD and Build, each is maintained by a separate person - we
> get far better man/hr per LOC coverage this way than if Walter has to manage
> both feature sets. ;)
> 
> - EricAnderton at yahoo

On the other hand, it happens that here that the "each do a particular 
job well" has something to be said: there is much overlap in the jobs of 
both utils (the compiler and build), such in fact that I think their 
jobs are not that different.
And as an example, the java compiler (javac) does this.


-- 
Bruno Medeiros - CS/E student
http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?BrunoMedeiros#D