Let Go, Standard Library From Community

[Bill Baxter]

Stephen Waits wrote:
> freeagle wrote:
>> And majority of people will tell you that only one instance of FreeBSD 
>> is a better thing than hundreds of instances of linux
> 
> Me included.  But that's OT.
> 
> The things about a "standard library".. first of all, it's "standard", 
> second, it's singular.
> 
> I want to (eventually) use D on the PS3.  If you've got some giant 
> standard library, then porting it to new platforms becomes burdensome. 
> Welcome to smelly town.
> 
> In my job, we don't need tons of library support.  Basic math, basic 
> containers, basic algorithms.  As a matter of fact, we (and about a 
> billion other people) have been using C and C++ and the associated 
> (relatively small other than that iostreams crap) stdlibs for a long 
> time now.  Crypto in the standard library?  NFW!

Then don't port the crypto functions.  Seems like the obvious answer. 
I'm sure Phobos also has plenty of stuff you won't need.  Whichever you 
go with, just port the parts you need.

> KISS guys, KISS..  why not retarget Tango as an addition to Phobos? 
> Something more kitchen-sink'ish?  (ala Python)

> Community or not, it's Walter's language.  Luckily for us, Walter is 
> really freakin' smart about this kind of stuff, and he'll decide, and 
> we'll all thank him for it.

It's pretty clear that Walter would prefer other people to take over the 
job of library design so he can concentrate on what he does best: 
compiler design.  But it seems clear also that he wants to keep Phobos 
around as a place where he can dump in little additions now and then, 
like std.metastrings.

I wonder if there might be some benefits to separating phobos and tango 
both out into a core lib containing only the barest essentials required 
to run D code (e.g. object and gc and not much else), and everything 
else.  Seems like it would be helpful in your case, at least.  It would 
seem somehow reassuring to me to be able to clearly see what's essential 
and what's optional.  But in the end the linker should discard whatever 
you don't use, so, from a practical standpoint, it's not so necessary.

--bb