GDC review process.

[Joseph Rushton Wakeling]

On 20/06/12 18:10, David Nadlinger wrote:
> I am not too sure about that: In my opinion, your description of the problem
> would be accurate if some compiler implemented asm {}, but with a different
> syntax or different semantics. But GDC simply does not (resp. will not)
> implement D-style inline assembly at all. From my point of view, this is not
> necessarily a problem spec-wise, as it is not guaranteed to be available – if it
> was, there would be no reason to have D_InlineAsm_X86 at all.

Reading http://dlang.org/iasm.html I don't have the impression that the inline 
assembler is an optional part of the D spec or not guaranteed to be available -- 
it's very deliberately intended to be there.

> Needless to say, inline assembly is sometimes a very convenient feature to have,
> but if it is the only issue stopping GDC from being merged to mainline GCC, I'd
> say the only sensible choice is to yank it, at least it for the time being. If,
> at a later point, somebody comes up with a clever way to implement it given the
> constraints imposed by the GCC infrastructure, or manages to convince the GCC
> maintainers to accept the »dirty« solution, it could still be added in again.

For sure it make sense as a short-term compromise, but I don't see how GDC can 
meet the D specifications without implementing the inline assembler at some 
point in the (hopefully near) future.  When you consider that GDC is the best 
bet for being able to compile D on ARM processors, and a major application here 
is embedded systems, it really seems necessary to plan to have this 
functionality in there.