dmd for ARM

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Nick Sabalausky" <a at a.a> wrote in message 
news:j5vfqp$2dd4$1 at digitalmars.com...
> "Trass3r" <un at known.com> wrote in message news:op.v2iqj1t23ncmek at enigma...
>> Am 28.09.2011, 01:30 Uhr, schrieb Ruben <chromium at hybridsource.org>:
>>
>>> Hello, is there a chance an ARM backend can be written for dmd this 
>>> year?
>>
>> No. We won't even get Win x64 support in that time frame.
>>
>>> it appears that those wanting to use ARM are pointed at gdc/ldc,
>>> but it seems like those two projects are usually behind in D2 support
>>
>> gdc is very active and so far has always been on par with dmd.
>> There are a few ARM-specific bugs though that still need to be fixed. 
>> Feel
>> free to help out.
>> ldc is only 1 revision behind currently.
>>
>>
>>> Some estimate of when dmd might come to ARM or
>>> why such a port is not a priority would be appreciated.
>>
>> Cause there are plenty of bugs and unfinished feature implementations 
>> that
>> are way more important.
>> Plus you are free to use gdc or ldc to generate code for ARM targets
>> *right now*.
>>
>
> Considering that myself and other people are *already* getting by with D 
> on x86 right now, I really have to strongly disagree with making D usable 
> on ARM being less important. Yes, there's definitely a lot of very 
> important things to be done right here on x86, but at least its *usable* 
> on x86. So usable, in fact, that there's people and companies already 
> relying on it for production work. But for ARM tagerts, you're pretty much 
> SOL at the moment, from what I understand.
>

And besides, about a year or so ago, x64 was considered "Super priority #1", 
even though x64 platforms are perfectly capable of running x86 code just 
fine. I'm not saying it *wasn't* important, but compare that to ARM: ARM 
machines are everywhere too, but they *don't* have the ability to go running 
anything we currently support quite so well as x64 did.

I kinda feel like we're being desktop snobs here.

> Of course, I'm not saying "Hey DMD/GDC/LDC/druntime/phobos developers, go 
> do that!!!" I have no right to say anything like that, especially since 
> I'm unable to help out on it myself. But I'm just saying I don't believe 
> anything could *really* be more important for D right now (well, except 
> maybe dynamic libs if there's still any big problems with that - I haven't 
> tried).
>
>> The real problem is druntime, memory management and the like that need to 
>> be sorted out.
>> But nobody fixed those yet.
>
>