D is dead

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On 8/24/18 6:16 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> On Friday, August 24, 2018 7:46:57 AM MDT Mike Franklin via Digitalmars-d
> wrote:
>> On Friday, 24 August 2018 at 13:21:25 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
>>> I think that you're crazy.
>>
>> No, I just see more potential in D than you do.
> 
> To be clear, I'm not calling you crazy in general. I'm calling the idea of
> bypassing libc to call syscalls directly under any kind of normal
> circumstances crazy. There is tons of work to be done around here to improve
> D, and IMHO, reimplementing OS functions just because they're written in C
> is a total waste of time and an invitation for bugs - in addition to making
> the druntime code that much less portable, since it bypasses the API layer
> that was standardized for POSIX systems.

Let me say that I both agree with Jonathan and with Mike.

I think we should reduce Phobos dependence on the user-library part of 
libc, while at the same time, not re-inventing how the OS bindings are 
called. For example, using Martin's std.io library instead of <stdio.h>.

I really don't want to see dlang have to maintain posix system calls on 
all supported OSes when that's already being done for us.

Windows makes this simpler -- the system calls are separate from the C 
runtime. It would be nice if Posix systems were that way, but it's both 
silly to reinvent the system calls (they are on every OS anyways, and in 
shared-library form), and a maintenance nightmare.

For platforms that DON'T have an OS abstraction, or it's split out from 
the user library part of libc, it would be perfectly acceptable to write 
a shim there if needed. I'd be surprised if it's not already present in 
C form.

-Steve