H1 2015 Priorities and Bare-Metal Programming

[Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d]

On 2/3/15 12:17 AM, Johannes Pfau wrote:
> Well I see that you're not even considering adding a simple pragma to
> help embedded programming. In that case I see absolutely no reason to
> continue working on that. You guys say "we lack expertise so we cannot
> help directly" and you're in "search of champions" for these areas. But
> whenever somebody working with D on embedded systems actually comes up
> with an issue related to embedded programming and propose solutions you
> simply dismiss it. Often even based on vague statements like "that's
> not a common task".
> http://wiki.dlang.org/Vision/2015H1

I think we need to work on better inlining. Which format (pragma vs. 
attribute etc) is just tactical detail. Clearly there needs to be "best 
effort" and "won't compile unless it inlines" directives.

Johannes, please let us know whether this is everything needed to float 
your boat. I'm unclear whether you believe "volatile" data is needed or 
not. If it's not, we're good; if it is, you need to redo your argument 
because it was poorly conducted.

> pragma(address) could be trivially implemented now and I still think
> it's a logical extension of the language, whereas global property ref
> functions for this purpose are just hacks. Till D will have full inline
> control rust will probably already have all the market share in these
> areas. At least I'm not willing to invest any more effort into this.

No need to get agitated over this. We're all on the same boat.

Rust also uses intrinsics for volatile loads and stores: 
http://doc.rust-lang.org/core/intrinsics/. It does have a way to force 
inlining recommended to use with caution: 
https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/rust-dev/2013-May/004272.html


Andrei