On Thursday, 7 February 2013 at 20:16:03 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> No, I can't say who it is at this time. Sorry. But it is a huge opportunity for us.
>
> To get the design win, we need to:
>
> (a) get dynamic linking and loading to work
>
AFAIK Martin Nowak has done first part for you.
Pull requests only needs to be merged to druntime I guess :)

> (b) improve language safety without degrading efficiency
>
> (c) improve quality as always
>
> Of course, these things benefit pretty much all D users anyway. Initially, (a) is the most important.

On Friday, 8 February 2013 at 07:18:56 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 2/7/2013 10:36 PM, Oleg Kuporosov wrote:
>> That is cool, but what is the target platform - Win/Lin, 32/64?
>
> Initially, Linux. Once that is worked out, doing the others should be straightforward.

My old request: if you speak Linux, a big + would be to push forward gdc and gcc integration.

On Feb 7, 2013, at 12:16 PM, Walter Bright <newshound2@digitalmars.com> wrote:

> No, I can't say who it is at this time. Sorry. But it is a huge opportunity for us.
> 
> To get the design win, we need to:
> 
> (a) get dynamic linking and loading to work

Which platform?  Loading a single dynamic D library or multiple libraries?  What language will the hosting app be written in?  What are the parameters for the dynamic library interface?  ie. extern C?  D functions?  UDTs as well?  Might exceptions be thrown across the library boundary?  Portions of this work better than others and it would help to know where to focus our efforts.

On Thursday, 7 February 2013 at 20:16:03 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> No, I can't say who it is at this time. Sorry. But it is a huge opportunity for us.
>
> To get the design win, we need to:
>
> (a) get dynamic linking and loading to work
>
> (b) improve language safety without degrading efficiency
>
> (c) improve quality as always
>
> Of course, these things benefit pretty much all D users anyway. Initially, (a) is the most important.

Consider that there are apparently problems when linking and loading D libs into C/C++ apps. I was told that the GC won't work correctly, but I'm no longer sure exactly why. If we can safely link+load shared D libs into C/C++ apps, it is not only useful to have right now, but it also opens up a safe migration path for C/C++ users to start using D with their existing C/C++ apps, and if it works well, they may start using D fully.

--rt

On 2/8/2013 12:29 PM, Sean Kelly wrote:
> On Feb 7, 2013, at 12:16 PM, Walter Bright <newshound2@digitalmars.com>
> wrote:
>
>> No, I can't say who it is at this time. Sorry. But it is a huge opportunity
>> for us.
>>
>> To get the design win, we need to:
>>
>> (a) get dynamic linking and loading to work
>
> Which platform?

linux.

> Loading a single dynamic D library or multiple libraries?
> What language will the hosting app be written in?  What are the parameters
> for the dynamic library interface?  ie. extern C?  D functions?  UDTs as
> well?  Might exceptions be thrown across the library boundary?  Portions of
> this work better than others and it would help to know where to focus our
> efforts.

A D app consisting of a main D exe with multiple D DLLs that can be loaded/unloaded at runtime will work.

On 7 Feb 2013 20:21, "Walter Bright" <newshound2@digitalmars.com> wrote:
>
> No, I can't say who it is at this time. Sorry. But it is a huge
opportunity for us.
>
> To get the design win, we need to:
>
> (a) get dynamic linking and loading to work
>

We should probably discuss implemetation ideas when you next have the opportunity.  :)

----
Iain Buclaw

*(p < e ? p++ : p) = (c & 0x0f) + '0';

The compiler currently has an option -shared for generating a shared library. It also has an option -fPIC for generating position independent code.

If option -shared is selected, will it automatically generate as PIC, or do you have to also specify -fPIC?

--rt

> If option -shared is selected, will it automatically generate as PIC, or do you have to also specify -fPIC?

When I used gfortran, it was -shared only on windows, on linux both options: -shared and -fPIC.

Was obtained empirically.

On 2/8/2013 6:19 PM, Iain Buclaw wrote:
> On 7 Feb 2013 20:21, "Walter Bright" <newshound2@digitalmars.com
> <mailto:newshound2@digitalmars.com>> wrote:
>  >
>  > No, I can't say who it is at this time. Sorry. But it is a huge opportunity
> for us.
>  >
>  > To get the design win, we need to:
>  >
>  > (a) get dynamic linking and loading to work
>  >
>
> We should probably discuss implemetation ideas when you next have the
> opportunity.  :)

Sure. I want to get the next release out, first, and then we'll get the shared library thing working.