Proposed improvements to the separate compilation model

[Vladimir Panteleev]

On Sat, 23 Jul 2011 01:06:19 +0300, Andrei Alexandrescu  
<SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote:

> A chat in IRC revealed a couple of possible improvements to the  
> development scenario in which the interface file (.di) is managed  
> manually and separately from the implementation file (.d).

I might be forgetting bits of our discussions at the moment, but has it  
been considered that instead of facilitating use of manually-maintained  
.di files, to instead improve auto-generated .di files to the point that  
manual maintenance is not necessary? Some ideas:

1) As discussed, @ctfeable (include function body in .di to allow using in  
CTFE)
2) Removing imports for modules containing symbols not mentioned in .di  
code (avoid pulling in dependencies of the implementation)
3) Perhaps, adding opaque objects ("class X;") to the language and  
emitting those as appropriate? (semi-automatic Pimpls)

Did I miss anything?

-- 
Best regards,
  Vladimir                            mailto:vladimir at thecybershadow.net