I want to share my experiences with making marketing for D.
At the company I am working for, Cloud and Cloud Foundry is a big thing.
At the office github there are several coding examples how to
develop applications for the languages Cloud Foundry supports
out of box: Java, Node.js, Ruby, Go, PHP and Python.
I decided to also develop a coding example in the D Language to make some marketing for D.
Unfortunately it was not added directly to the coding examples,
because it is not an official Cloud Foundry language.

Using a third party buildpack it is possible to also support D but the marketing
effect for D would be huge if it would be listed as official supported language.

Short explanation for buildpack: Cloud Foundry gives your application an environment
which is prepared by using 3 shell scripts called the buildpack. You only upload the D
source code to Cloud Foundry. In Cloud Foundry dmd / dub ... are downloaded and executed
to compile your application.

There are some prerequisites which would maximize the chance for D to become an official CF language:

1. Easy installation: Bundle dmd with dub
The buildpack coding should be small and easy. At the moment dmd and dub must
be downloaded from different places to different cache folders, extracted with different tools...

2. Stable link to last released dmd
Is there an archive link, always pointing to the last released dmd archive?
Instead of always adapting the buildpack, a stable link to the recent dmd archive
would be a great benefit

3. Fast installation: Currently the dmd zip is about 60 Mb. The download size doesn't
matter that much, because it is downloaded once and then cached. But it must be unzipped on every push of the
application. This makes the push slow. Could be a minimized archive provided, with only these
files absolutely necessary to compile a D application?

4. Dub support for git repositories
I wrote a http/OData library in the office and uploaded it to the company internal github.
The buildpack shell script loads in addition to the dmd and dub archive also this git repository
and added it to DUB with command "add-local". This is a bad hack, but I cannot publish it on code.dlang.org
due it is an company internal library.
I wish dub would support to specifiy a git repository.
With this feature, you could push d applications to Cloud Foundry which either uses a http engine
from code.dlang.org (vibe-d with libasync) or in a company scenario, from an internal git repository.

5. Dub support for package registries other than code.dlang.org
Either by manipulation a DNS or by taking over code.dlang.org or an github repository,
an attacker could insert malicious code into your application. To reduce the attack vector,
companies have their own package registries with proven packages. I would like to specify in
dub.json which package registries, DUB will load the packages from.

Kind regards
André

On 2015-10-09 20:26, Andre wrote:

> 2. Stable link to last released dmd
> Is there an archive link, always pointing to the last released dmd archive?
> Instead of always adapting the buildpack, a stable link to the recent
> dmd archive
> would be a great benefit

Yes, for DMD: http://ftp.digitalmars.com/LATEST
For GDC: http://ftp.digitalmars.com/LATEST_GDC

> 3. Fast installation: Currently the dmd zip is about 60 Mb.

That sounds like the shared zip with for all platforms. The latest beta (2.069.0-b1) is 16.7 MB for OS X.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

Am Fri, 9 Oct 2015 20:56:28 +0200
schrieb Jacob Carlborg <doob@me.com>:

> For GDC: http://ftp.digitalmars.com/LATEST_GDC

The new location is here: ftp://ftp.gdcproject.org/LATEST

On 10/10/15 7:26 AM, Andre wrote:
> I want to share my experiences with making marketing for D.
> At the company I am working for, Cloud and Cloud Foundry is a big thing.
> At the office github there are several coding examples how to
> develop applications for the languages Cloud Foundry supports
> out of box: Java, Node.js, Ruby, Go, PHP and Python.
> I decided to also develop a coding example in the D Language to make
> some marketing for D.
> Unfortunately it was not added directly to the coding examples,
> because it is not an official Cloud Foundry language.
>
> Using a third party buildpack it is possible to also support D but the
> marketing
> effect for D would be huge if it would be listed as official supported
> language.
>
> Short explanation for buildpack: Cloud Foundry gives your application an
> environment
> which is prepared by using 3 shell scripts called the buildpack. You
> only upload the D
> source code to Cloud Foundry. In Cloud Foundry dmd / dub ... are
> downloaded and executed
> to compile your application.
>
> There are some prerequisites which would maximize the chance for D to
> become an official CF language:
>
> 1. Easy installation: Bundle dmd with dub
> The buildpack coding should be small and easy. At the moment dmd and dub
> must
> be downloaded from different places to different cache folders,
> extracted with different tools...

Wrong way round. Bundle dub with dmd is already planned.

> 2. Stable link to last released dmd
> Is there an archive link, always pointing to the last released dmd archive?
> Instead of always adapting the buildpack, a stable link to the recent
> dmd archive
> would be a great benefit
>
> 3. Fast installation: Currently the dmd zip is about 60 Mb. The download
> size doesn't
> matter that much, because it is downloaded once and then cached. But it
> must be unzipped on every push of the
> application. This makes the push slow. Could be a minimized archive
> provided, with only these
> files absolutely necessary to compile a D application?

I am sure Walter will have no problem with you creating a custom archive, perhaps with tar? If that suits you better. Check with him however.

> 4. Dub support for git repositories
> I wrote a http/OData library in the office and uploaded it to the
> company internal github.
> The buildpack shell script loads in addition to the dmd and dub archive
> also this git repository
> and added it to DUB with command "add-local". This is a bad hack, but I
> cannot publish it on code.dlang.org
> due it is an company internal library.
> I wish dub would support to specifiy a git repository.
> With this feature, you could push d applications to Cloud Foundry which
> either uses a http engine
> from code.dlang.org (vibe-d with libasync) or in a company scenario,
> from an internal git repository.

That may not be possible. Unless you want to make dub dependent upon git. Which it currently isn't. Right now it uses e.g. Github to create an archive of the repository and download that.
Although some trade off will be possible.

Also it all goes through code.dlang.org the last I remember.

> 5. Dub support for package registries other than code.dlang.org
> Either by manipulation a DNS or by taking over code.dlang.org or an
> github repository,
> an attacker could insert malicious code into your application. To reduce
> the attack vector,
> companies have their own package registries with proven packages. I
> would like to specify in
> dub.json which package registries, DUB will load the packages from.

It exists, the support is there. Just not in the dub configuration file. It is something that would be nice to have.

On Saturday, 10 October 2015 at 02:49:23 UTC, Rikki Cattermole wrote:

>> [...]
>
> Wrong way round. Bundle dub with dmd is already planned.
>

I hoped 2.069 already contains dub, maybe with 2.070

>> [...]
>
> I am sure Walter will have no problem with you creating a custom archive, perhaps with tar? If that suits you better. Check with him however.
>
>> [...]
>
> That may not be possible. Unless you want to make dub dependent upon git. Which it currently isn't. Right now it uses e.g. Github to create an archive of the repository and download that.
> Although some trade off will be possible.
>
> Also it all goes through code.dlang.org the last I remember.
>

yes it would depend on git. I suggest a new dub attribute. The
value starts with a protocol. Like file:// if it is a zip on the local
pc or a file on a file server. git:// if it is a git repository.

>> [...]
>
> It exists, the support is there. Just not in the dub configuration file. It is something that would be nice to have.

This feature would also be a "work around" for 4). I will file feature
requests