Hello to all.  I have just purchased a copy of Andrei A's book on D and I'm about halfway through it. I have some projects in mind to which I would like to apply this very interesting language.

I am working on an 8-core machine with x86-64 chips and Ubuntu 10.04. Am I right that there is no dmd binary available for my machine??  I only see i386 and amd64 options when I look at the binary download options.

Apparently a build of dmd from source is impossible because the dmd backend is proprietary?  (This would seem to me to be a stumbling block to D's acceptance, but that is not my concern.)

There is an LLVM compiler, ldc, available via Ubuntu's package manager.  Is this any good?

I would rather try out D than use some other options that I have. However my experience with compiled languages has convinced me that the efficiency of one's compiler, as well its ability actually to implement everything that's supposed to be possible in the given language, is a very significant concern.  I don't want to get up to my elbows in D and discover that something doesn't compile or doesn't execute so very well after being compiled.

I seached the list for this concern and came up with nothing.  But I apologize if the Ubuntu x86-64 issue has already been addressed.

Best to all.

On Friday, 23 November 2012 at 17:56:49 UTC, Mark Morss wrote:
> Am I right that there is no dmd binary available for my machine??  I only see i386 and amd64 options when I look at the binary download options.

amd64 and x86-64 are the same thing, so this should work:
http://ftp.digitalmars.com/dmd_2.060-0_amd64.deb

> Apparently a build of dmd from source is impossible because the dmd backend is proprietary?  (This would seem to me to be a stumbling block to D's acceptance, but that is not my concern.)

No, the complete source comes in the dmd zip. Just grab that, unzip it, then go to dmd2/src/dmd and run make -f posix.mak.

Here's the zip download:
https://github.com/downloads/D-Programming-Language/dmd/dmd.2.060.zip

The zip includes binaries and source for all platforms.

I think the source is in the .deb too but I'm not sure (I haven't actually used it)

On 11/23/2012 06:56 PM, Mark Morss wrote:
> Hello to all.  I have just purchased a copy of Andrei A's book on D and
> I'm about halfway through it. I have some projects in mind to which I
> would like to apply this very interesting language.
>
> I am working on an 8-core machine with x86-64 chips and Ubuntu 10.04. Am
> I right that there is no dmd binary available for my machine??

No.

>  I only see i386 and amd64 options when I look at the binary download options.
>

amd64 is x86-64 and therefore what you want. It is named that way because AMD introduced it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amd64

> Apparently a build of dmd from source is impossible because the dmd
> backend is proprietary?  (This would seem to me to be a stumbling block
> to D's acceptance, but that is not my concern.)
>

A build of dmd from source is possible, but you may not redistribute the backend source code without explicit permission.

https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dmd

> There is an LLVM compiler, ldc, available via Ubuntu's package manager.
> Is this any good?
>

The package is usually out of date. You can build ldc from source:

https://github.com/ldc-developers/ldc
https://github.com/ldc-developers/ldc/wiki/Installation

There is also gdc, which uses the gcc backend:

https://github.com/D-Programming-GDC/GDC
http://www.gdcproject.org/wiki/Installation

> I would rather try out D than use some other options that I have.
> However my experience with compiled languages has convinced me that the
> efficiency of one's compiler, as well its ability actually to implement
> everything that's supposed to be possible in the given language, is a
> very significant concern.  I don't want to get up to my elbows in D and
> discover that something doesn't compile

You will likely hit some compiler bugs of this kind at this point. Usually they are reasonably easy to work around.

> or doesn't execute so very well after being compiled.
>

This is very rare.

> I seached the list for this concern and came up with nothing. But I
> apologize if the Ubuntu x86-64 issue has already been addressed.
>
> Best to all.

Al 23/11/12 19:02, En/na Adam D. Ruppe ha escrit:
> 
> I think the source is in the .deb too but I'm not sure (I haven't actually used it)
> 

deb packages contains druntime and phobos sources just as headers.

-- 
Jordi Sayol

My thanks to all who answered.  Clearly, it was a case of ignorance on my part.  I'll download and install the amd64 binary.

Concerning "does not execute that well," I should have said, "that fast."  My experience with compiled languages has been that depending on the compiler you use, you can get very different execution times.

But that point is moot.

Again, thanks to all.