Make dub part of the standard dmd distribution

[Mathias Lang via Digitalmars-d]

2015-06-01 20:03 GMT+02:00 Johannes Pfau via Digitalmars-d <
digitalmars-d at puremagic.com>:

>
> The main problem is we don't have ABI compatibility. This means we can't
> share the libraries between compilers. So we could make 'import foo'
> work but linking with -lfoo without manually adjusting linker paths is
> not possible.
>
> There are some solutions, all have drawbacks:
> * Have compiler specific directories for libraries
>   (/usr/lib/gdc/libvibed.a, /usr/lib/dmd/libvibed.a). Only works for
>   static libraries. Can only have one version of a library installed
> * have per-library directories. I guess dub uses this. Can have
>   multiple versions of the same library. Drawback: compiler can't know
>   the correct library path.[1]
> * Shared libraries should be installed in a common location (/usr/lib)
>   anyway. This is only possible if we have ABI compatibility[2].
>   Library versioning is limited to the standard C/C++ like versioning.
>
> I guess the main reason why we can't have a C/C++ like out of the box
> experience is ABI compatibility. There'll always be some quirks as long
> as we don't fix this.
>
>
Glad to see that post !

But in addition of the ABI compatibility between compilers, we would need
to have ABI compatibility between releases of the same major version if we
were to walk the C[++] route, and we do not want that, for various reason,
the most obvious one being that you won't be able to add an attribute like
@nogc / nothrow to a free function without doing a major release.

There is good thing about C way of doing thing, but there is also some bad.
For example, you can't have multiple versions of the same library installed
- you don't need it -, but D definitely needs that. That also leads to
major releases ending up in a different package - think qt4 / qt5 -. So,
while C use SemVer for ABI compatibility, we should use SemVer for source
compatibility, or we'll end up with an unmanageable mess.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.puremagic.com/pipermail/digitalmars-d/attachments/20150603/555197d4/attachment-0001.html>