Phobos and dependencies

[Jonas Drewsen]

Hi,

   Currently phobos doesn't really have any dependencies except for 
system libraries. Many of the GSOC projects discussed lately have 
dependencies on 3rd party C libraries. So I think maybe now is a good 
time to settle on how to handle new dependencies in Phobos.

Personally I would hate to be forced to have libSomeSpecialDomain 
available on my system just because someone added SpecialDomain classes 
to Phobos. In my view the standard library should only depend on system 
libraries and libraries that are very common.

The nice thing about having domain specific packages/modules inside 
phobos like SQL and Image support is that it works as a kind of 
guarantee or blessing for the packages/modules.

My suggestion is to create a new phobos package called something like 
'stdext' or 'ext' or simply use the existing 'etc'. The same people 
accepting things going into Phobos would also determine modules should 
be accepted in this new package. The new thing would be that all 
accepted extension packages should be downloadable right next to the 
phobos download (on d-programming-language.com / digitalmars.com). This 
would make it possible to mandate some kind of standard SQL,Image... 
packages without forcing dependencies into libphobos.

Good idea/bad idea?

/Jonas