Hello, a few engineers at Red Hat are taking a look at using the D language on the desktop and have reached out to us. They have created a list of issues. We are on the top-level ones, and of course would appreciate any community help as well.

https://gist.github.com/ximion/77dda83a9926f892c9a4fa0074d6bf2b


Thanks,

Andrei

On Tuesday, 20 December 2016 at 23:08:28 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> https://gist.github.com/ximion/77dda83a9926f892c9a4fa0074d6bf2b

Pretty cool.
One of the DUB issues is:

> There is no default "release-build-with-debug-symbols" target.


Seems like a documentation bug, because:

    dub -b release-debug

does exist.

Now: https://github.com/dlang/dub/issues/1025

On Tuesday, 20 December 2016 at 23:08:28 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Hello, a few engineers at Red Hat are taking a look at using the D language on the desktop and have reached out to us. They have created a list of issues. We are on the top-level ones, and of course would appreciate any community help as well.
>
> https://gist.github.com/ximion/77dda83a9926f892c9a4fa0074d6bf2b
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Andrei

It's always the same thing, isn't it ?

DMD isn't free software (as non redistribuable), poor integration with existing tools and file format (here deps files, but generally almost everything use its own format rather than industry standard), non standard command line flags/syntax, and unittest are kind of weird.

On 2016-12-21 00:08, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Hello, a few engineers at Red Hat are taking a look at using the D
> language on the desktop and have reached out to us. They have created a
> list of issues. We are on the top-level ones, and of course would
> appreciate any community help as well.
>
> https://gist.github.com/ximion/77dda83a9926f892c9a4fa0074d6bf2b

I had a suggestion [1] to do something about the current state of unit tests but that was quickly shot down or went (slightly) off topic.

[1] http://forum.dlang.org/thread/npptbk$2mk0$1@digitalmars.com

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On Tuesday, 20 December 2016 at 23:08:28 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Hello, a few engineers at Red Hat are taking a look at using the D language on the desktop and have reached out to us. They have created a list of issues. We are on the top-level ones, and of course would appreciate any community help as well.
>
> https://gist.github.com/ximion/77dda83a9926f892c9a4fa0074d6bf2b
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Andrei

The assert/unittest issues can be solved with a library:

https://github.com/nomad-software/dunit

On Tuesday, 20 December 2016 at 23:08:28 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Hello, a few engineers at Red Hat are taking a look at using the D language on the desktop and have reached out to us. They have created a list of issues. We are on the top-level ones, and of course would appreciate any community help as well.

Is moving to LLVM backend or LDC something that is on the roadmap?

On 12/20/16 6:08 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Hello, a few engineers at Red Hat are taking a look at using the D
> language on the desktop and have reached out to us. They have created a
> list of issues. We are on the top-level ones, and of course would
> appreciate any community help as well.
>
> https://gist.github.com/ximion/77dda83a9926f892c9a4fa0074d6bf2b

An engineer from Debian wrote down what's needed on the distribution side to give a green light to the D language:

https://gist.github.com/ximion/fe6264481319dd94c8308b1ea4e8207a


Andrei

On Tuesday, 20 December 2016 at 23:08:28 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Hello, a few engineers at Red Hat are taking a look at using the D language on the desktop and have reached out to us. They have created a list of issues. We are on the top-level ones, and of course would appreciate any community help as well.
>
> https://gist.github.com/ximion/77dda83a9926f892c9a4fa0074d6bf2b
>
>
> Thanks,
>
> Andrei

What is the story over the ownership of DMD's backend? I believe Walter's former employer has some stake in it. Has Walter spoken to them about them donating whatever rights they have to the D foundation?

On Wednesday, 21 December 2016 at 13:18:48 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 12/20/16 6:08 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> Hello, a few engineers at Red Hat are taking a look at using the D
>> language on the desktop and have reached out to us. They have created a
>> list of issues. We are on the top-level ones, and of course would
>> appreciate any community help as well.
>>
>> https://gist.github.com/ximion/77dda83a9926f892c9a4fa0074d6bf2b
>
> An engineer from Debian wrote down what's needed on the distribution side to give a green light to the D language:
>
> https://gist.github.com/ximion/fe6264481319dd94c8308b1ea4e8207a
>
>
> Andrei

Thank you for finding this links. The listed issues are very important.

On Wednesday, 21 December 2016 at 13:26:14 UTC, ixid wrote:
> On Tuesday, 20 December 2016 at 23:08:28 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> Hello, a few engineers at Red Hat are taking a look at using the D language on the desktop and have reached out to us. They have created a list of issues. We are on the top-level ones, and of course would appreciate any community help as well.
>>
>> https://gist.github.com/ximion/77dda83a9926f892c9a4fa0074d6bf2b
>>
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Andrei
>
> What is the story over the ownership of DMD's backend? I believe Walter's former employer has some stake in it. Has Walter spoken to them about them donating whatever rights they have to the D foundation?

You have the answer elements here https://forum.dlang.org/search?q=backend%20symantec&page=1.
tl;dr: the backend comes from a commercial C++ compiler that was written by Bright but commercialized by Symantec. This company still owns the rights.

I'd like to add that the windows version would require another change so that DMD becomes true FOSS. Unless the 32 bit version get dropped away, the standard C library, snn.lib, is even not open-sourced (which is a worst than the backend situation) !