June 03, 2004
Hi

I have started to use the SWIG with DMD (see the last posting.
This makes it possible to interface to an existing class written in C++
from D.
This may not be what was intended, but it has now become possible.
SWIG generates automatically a code layer which is linked in C style
which goes between the D and C++ codes.

In order to use this it is necessary to compile and link all the modules. Typically there will be the function bodies for the C++ code (say example.cxx) the interface which will be example_wrap.cxx and some d code e.g. example.d.  There will be an example application, say app.d.  The natural thing is to compile this with

g++ -c example.cxx
g++ -c example_wrap.cxx
dmd app.d example.d example_wrap.o example.o

Unfortunately, this does not work as dmd links with gcc rather than g++.  It is necessary to compile all the modules e.g.

dmd -c app.d

(and make sure all the files have different names) and then link with g++, which involves spelling out the D libraries

g++ app.o -oapp exampled.o example_wrap.o example.o -lphobos -lpthread -lm

Could dmd for Linux have a flag -c++ which would mean that the link step used g++ instead of gcc?  That way it could be done in one step.

Thanks

John Fletcher