Phobos/Tango Unification Plans

[Benji Smith]

I was just looking through bearophile's library (which is based on 
Phobos) and thinking about how it's too bad that I can't use it because 
my code is all based on Tango.

I know there are plans currently in the works to implement a compatible 
runtime layer, via Sean's druntime project. And it'll be a breath of 
fresh air to get rid of the basic incompatibilities in the two runtimes.

But if that's all that happens, it'll still leave an undesirable 
situation, since all the other userland stuff will be incompatible.

Eventually, any significantly complex project is likely to have some 
dependent libraries built on top of both Phobos and Tango. At the very 
least, string-processing routines from both libraries will get compiled 
into the final executable.

Not only will that result in duplication of functionality (and code 
bloat), but it'll also mean a bunch of bit-twiddling whenever sending a 
Tango type into a Phobos-dependent library function (and vice versa).

Are there any plans in the works to mitigate that problem? Like, 
perhaps, negotiating a common API so that at least the names and 
argument types are the same in both libraries?

I'm sure the two libraries will always include different subsets of 
functionality, but whenever they implement the same basic features, it'd 
be great if they used a compatible API.

--benji