GSOC Linker project

[foobar]

On Friday, 4 May 2012 at 18:30:32 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
> On 5/4/12, foobar <foo at bar.com> wrote:
>> The di files are mostly meant to be machine read (e.g. the
>> compiler) and this belongs as part of the library file in order
>> to provide ease of use and maintain the relationship between 
>> the
>> binary code and it's interface.
>>
>> maintaining two sets of files that could easily get out of sync
>> and *not* using the docs is way more insane.
>>
>
> I'd say the docs are more likely to be out of sync than .di 
> code. If
> the .di code is really out of sync you'll likely even get linker
> errors. And not everything ends up being documented.
>
> And then what about existing tools like IDEs and editors. E.g.
> autocomplete wouldn't work anymore.

I'd say you'd be wrong.
Both di and docs are auto-generated from the same source.
As I said docs are designed for human consumption. This includes 
all sorts of features such as a table of contents, a symbol 
index, the symbols should have links, the docs provide usage 
examples, etc, etc.
Docs can be put online thus ensuring they're always up-to-date.

Tools should either read the data from the lib file or retrieve 
it from the web. Keeping separate local di files is simply insane.

And really, have you never heard of Java? How about Pascal?
Should I continue back in history to all the languages that 
implemented this feature decades ago?
C/C++ is a huge PITA with their nonsense compilation model which 
we shouldn't have copied verbatim in D.