On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 4:29 AM, Iain Buclaw via D.gnu <d.gnu@puremagic.com> wrote:


On 11 Aug 2014 06:25, "Trent Forkert via D.gnu" <d.gnu@puremagic.com> wrote:
>
> On Sun, Jul 27, 2014 at 12:25 PM, Iain Buclaw via D.gnu <d.gnu@puremagic.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I've been turning around the idea in my head to start removing aspects of the D frontend from GDC as each part is converted into the more modular/pluggable Visitor interface.
>>
>> Some initial thoughts are along the lines of, remove the extraneous tooling components that we have on offer in DMD, meaning GDC is strictly kept as a compiler only.
>>
>> Potential files up for deletion include:
>>
>> - doc.c:  Because people should be using the (far) superior DDox [1].
>> - macro.c: Used by the DDoc engine.
>> - json.c: I can't think of a good reason to keep it.
>
>
> I don't think getting rid of DDoc is a good idea (having it built into the compiler is a plus, IMO), and I should probably point out that according to DDox documentation, you need the compiler-generated JSON to actually do anything. So at least one of these systems needs to stick around if GDC is to generate documentation without depending on DMD or LDC.
>
>  - Trent

Wasn't aware of that. Thanks for letting us know.

Have you actually tried using ddoc or json generation from gdc?  You are really better off using dmd for it.


Nothing beyond simple test cases for my experimental CMake work, where I'm trying to have the same support for dmd, ldc, and gdc. From everything I've tried, ddoc generation works the same as dmd/ldc. I don't need/use json generation, though.
 

These features are planned to be simplified in use anyway (no way of passing an out filename or directory path).

http://bugzilla.gdcproject.org/show_bug.cgi?id=119

Iain.


I'm mostly supportive of those changes (cleaner interfaces are nice). The only thing I see is that I'm not sure how often a user would actually want docs and interfaces to be written to the same directory as the -o file, instead of docs/ and import/ directories. Requiring files be copied/moved into place after the fact is workable for me, if a little awkward.

 - Trent