[ABI] 128bit integers and other vendor types

[Daniel Murphy via Digitalmars-d]

"H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d"  wrote in message 
news:mailman.130.1406587551.16021.digitalmars-d at puremagic.com...

> It depends on how we do the transition. If we replace dmd with ddmd
> first, then we'll run into problems with Phobos adoption, because we may
> discover that using Phobos causes (d)dmd to be unacceptably slow /
> bloated / etc., which means it becomes a disincentive to use Phobos in
> ddmd.

There is no if, this is exactly how it is going to happen.  Phobos will not 
be used in ddmd until after the transition.

> But another way to approach it, is to do Phobos integration first, while
> we still have the current C++ code. We may discover that ddmd becomes
> unacceptably slow -- but since all of us want to make D self-hosted,
> this is great incentive for improving Phobos so that ddmd is *not* slow.
> While we work on fixing Phobos, we still have the current C++ dmd to
> serve user needs. Then when Phobos is finally no longer slow/bloated in
> ddmd, we can transition to ddmd and have a compiler on par or even
> better than the C++ dmd.

No.  If you want to improve phobos, make phobos quality a blocker for your 
own projects, don't screw over ddmd.

> Well, I don't think anyone is going to *force* you to do that, this
> being a volunteer project and everything. :-) What about recruiting new
> contributors who can help out?

Again, let's not make a phobos problem a dmd problem.

> Not necessarily. If the compiler doesn't use the parts of Phobos that
> has the new attribute, then it's not a problem.

Maybe, but I'm not so sure it will be that easy.

> Another solution (albeit uglier) is to use version(...) in Phobos to
> suppress certain new features if the current compiler is known not to
> support it:

That's somewhere between horrific and unacceptable.  It's just not worth it.

> I think this should be possible using static if (__VERSION__ ...).

Possible but not worthwhile.