Library standardization

[Hans W. Uhlig]

Bill Baxter wrote:
> Sean Kelly wrote:
>> == Quote from Janice Caron (caron800 at googlemail.com)'s article
>>> On 19/04/2008, Sean Kelly <sean at invisibleduck.org> wrote:
>>>>> So you want the ability to import a module, but not have to rebuild
>>>>  > dependent files if that module changes?
>>>>  > Good luck with that one.
>>>>
>>>> Apparently you've never used C/C++.  I apologize or the 
>>>> misunderstanding.
>>> Touché. But I was talking about D.
>>> OK, so you're basically saying you want D to have header files, like
>>> C. Fair enough. The prospect doesn't thrill me, but I would be
>>> intrigued to know how other many people want this.
>>
>> Personally, I'd just like the auto header generator to provide some
>> means of not outputting bodies of any functions at all.  The easiest
>> way to accomplish this would be to make the feature sensitive to
>> the -inline switch.  Bonus points would be awarded for preserving
>> the formatting of the original file, but I suspect that would be 
>> difficult
>> to accomplish.
> 
> -inline has the wrong sense though.  Most people are probably happy with 
> things the way they are, so you'd want a -noinline flag for those folks 
> who want to prevent outputting function bodies.  Except if you're going 
> to make a flag that's just for not outputting function bodies you might 
> as well call it -Hnoimpl or something.
> 
> I can't actually use -inline on my project because it pushes my modules 
> over OPTLINK'S fixup limit.
> 
> --bb
Why not simply make a module have a modifier.

instead of
module Time;
use
library module Time;

Then it changes how the module itself is handled