dmd-x64

[Travis Boucher]

Matt wrote:
> On 12/22/09 2:34 AM, Travis Boucher wrote:
>> alkor wrote:
>>> it's bad
>>> d's good enough to make real projects, but complier MUST supports
>>> linux x64 as a target platform
>>>
>>> believe, it's time to make 64-bit code generation
>>>
>>> is it possible to take back-end (i.e. code generation) from gcc or
>>> it's too complicated?
>>
>> Look up gdc and ldc, both can target x86_64. gdc tends to be lagging
>> behind (ALOT) in the dmd front end, ldc not as much.
> 
> GDC is being maintained again. See 
> http://bitbucket.org/goshawk/gdc/wiki/Home
> They are up to DMD 1.043 and there has been significant activity 
> recently. It could take a while for them to get fully caught up, but 
> they are making good progress.

gdc is still lagging quite a bit, I've been following the goshawk 
branch.  The problem here is he has to deal with both the major DMD 
changes (in 2 different D versions) and the big changes in GCC, so 
maintaining gdc itself would be an annoying process since there isn't a 
bit of support on either end of the bridge.  (DM does what best for DM, 
gcc won't accept a language like D (even though it has more similarities 
to C/C++ then java/fortran/ada does).

ldc on the other hand has a great structure which promotes using it as a 
backend for a different front end, however it doesn't (yet) generic code 
nearly as good as gcc.

dmd's focus seems to be more about a reference compiler then a flexible 
compile that generates great code.

Personally, I still use an old ass gdc based on GCC 4.1.3, DMD1.020 
because it happens to be the one that best supports my platform 
(FreeBSD/amd64).  The only real issues I run into is a few issues with 
CTFE and dsss/rebuild's handling of a few compiler errors  (eg. 
writefln("..."; results in rebuild exploding.)