Make [was Re: SCons and gdc]

[Rob T]

You know there's a really big problem to solve when getting Make 
to build properly can be more difficult than gettiing the program 
it is supposed to be building to work.

My biggest problem with D right now, is that I cannot easily 
build anything of significance, even with Make which I know quite 
well, or scone, which I know next to nothing about at this point 
(just started using it).

I've tried scons with the D support, but I have had the same 
issues as has been reported in here, so it's been a very rough 
ride.

I may be having two problems, one with understanding how D apps 
are supposed to be built, and problems with the build tools that 
are still in development.

Currently I am trying very hard to get rid of Make, really I 
don't have much choice because AFAIK there's no easy way to get a 
useful dependency list out of gdc or dmd that can be used with 
Make. There is an option to produce a dependency list, but the 
output seems to be useless because it does not include full path 
for some of the dependecies, and the format is wrong to boot 
(needs Make to run an editor to clean up), and cgd 4.7 has a bug 
with producing the output rendering it totally useless (I'll try 
and report this bug on the tracker, now that I have an account).

Given the significant problems I'm experiencing, I really wonder 
how anyone is building anything of significance in D? Since it 
appears that significant apps are being built, I figure I'm 
trying to do things in a C/C++ way when I am expected to do 
things in a different "D way".

Can anyone point me towards documentation that explains the best 
practices to build D apps? I'm not talking about simple one file 
programs, but multiple files that may have dependencies spanning 
across alternate project folders.

--rt