C++, D: Dinosaurs?

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Tony" <tonytech08 at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:gerdem$rc4$1 at digitalmars.com...
>
> "Nick Sabalausky" <a at a.a> wrote in message 
> news:gep0ej$232$1 at digitalmars.com...
>> "Tony" <tonytech08 at gmail.com> wrote in message 
>> news:geogvj$1p5r$2 at digitalmars.com...
>>>
>>> "Robert Fraser" <fraserofthenight at gmail.com> wrote in message 
>>> news:geo5p6$12gk$1 at digitalmars.com...
>>>> Tony wrote:
>>>>> (one HAS to use GC with D, right?)
>>>>
>>>> No. Well, the compiler generates calls to allocate & free memory, but 
>>>> you can replace those calls with whatever you want. See Tango's 
>>>> (druntime's) "stub" GC, which just reroutes compiler-generated calls to 
>>>> GC methods to malloc() and free(). You can implement your own "GC" or 
>>>> whatever management scheme you want (in fact, if you're writing, say, a 
>>>> device driver in D, you would want to use a custom allocator like this 
>>>> and not the built-in GC).
>>>
>>> Please clarify for me the mem mgmt of D: is the garbage collector 
>>> optional or not?
>>
>> Yes, it can be ripped out, replaced, whatever. It's slightly hacky, but 
>> it's perfectly doable. I did it a few years ago when I was playing around 
>> with using GDC with DevKitARM for GBA.
>>
>> IIRC, you just go into "extern (C) int main(size_t argc, char **argv)" in 
>> the internal portion of phobos/tango/druntime or wherever it lives now 
>> and comment-out the calls to "gc_init()" and "gc_term()". You might also 
>> need to call "gc.disable()" or something (don't really remember). And 
>> then if you still want to use "new" and/or "delete" with your own memory 
>> manager, you can use D's class allocator and deallocator feature 
>> (http://www.digitalmars.com/d/1.0/class.html#allocators). I assume you 
>> could probably plug those class allocators/deallocators directly into the 
>> internal object class if you wanted.
>
> It sounds like a lot of work and new stuff to learn about the 
> implementation. Let's face it, I'm not going to use D since it doesn't 
> offer me anything over C++ that I want. The main thing I may like about D 
> is that it makes the effort to make implementation of the language easier, 
> and that, I think, is very key. I am here to look for features I would put 
> in a new language, though that may be too large of an endeavor for someone 
> my age.
>
> Tony
>

If you've already got your own full-fleged, reliable, memory management 
system, plugging it into D via the methods Robert and I pointed out is 
nothing by comparison.