Compile time executable calling?

[H. S. Teoh]

On Sat, Jul 13, 2013 at 12:51:03AM +0200, Tofu Ninja wrote:
> On Friday, 12 July 2013 at 22:36:22 UTC, Peter Alexander wrote:
> >On Friday, 12 July 2013 at 20:42:50 UTC, Tofu Ninja wrote:
> >>So I had an idea recently, wouldn't it be cool to have the
> >>ability to call an executable at compile time and capture its
> >>output.
> >
> >How long until D compilers are able to read mail? :-)

Zawinski's law of software envelopment:

	Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those
	programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

:-)


> >There's many obvious applications of this proposed feature, but I
> >say such things should be delegated to the build process. Just run
> >those executables using a makefile, or whatever build system you
> >use.
> >
> >If you need compile time inputs from your D code then just run a
> >separate build to extract them. Yes it's more work and less
> >convenient, but I think we need to be careful with how much is
> >added to the D compilers. We don't want to turn them into
> >operating systems.
> 
> I think this is in line with what you want though, it allows the
> things that really should be separate to be separate in another
> executable, the only thing that it is really bring into the language
> is that you wont have to rely on a makefile as much, which in my
> opinion is a good thing.

Makefiles are really a poor example of build systems. A proper build
system can do such things in a much better, consistent way.

Makefiles, for example, can't correctly recompile your program if you
change compiler flags. And complex interdependencies, like you said,
require painful manual maintenance, otherwise they tend to screw up and
produce inconsistent results.

For an example of a modern build system, see http://gittup.org/tup/.


T

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