Jai compiles 80,000 lines of code in under a second

[Vladimir Panteleev]

On Friday, 21 September 2018 at 06:30:40 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 9/20/2018 10:11 PM, mate wrote:
>> Note that the build can be done at compile time because the 
>> metaprogramming capabilities of the language are not limited 
>> in terms of system calls.
>
> Back in the naive olden days, Microsoft released ActiveX, where 
> a web page could load executable objects (!) from the internet 
> and run them in the browser.
>
> It quickly became apparent that this was a disaster, as lots of 
> people on the internet aren't to be trusted.
>
> CTFE on D doesn't allow making any system calls. This is on 
> purpose.

The usual argument against this is that source code distributions 
already usually include some sort of build or installation script 
(be it in the form of "configure", or a makefile, or a Visual 
Studio project), which can already execute arbitrary commands.

The problem with putting it in the compiler is that it 
invalidates many contracts (and, thus, use cases) about what 
invoking the compiler can do. This means you can't bisect or 
reduce (as with Dustmite) the source code reliably. Reproducible 
builds are out too, as the produced object file is no longer 
purely a function of the source code and compiler version.