Is this project still alive?  Nothing seems to have happened in an awfully long time, but I'd still love to see D for other platforms some day!

Dana

--
Dana M. Anderson
Athens, GA

Well, it definitely is not dead, but Walter has created a D for Linux himself and D for BSD-Unix is in progress...

Thanks!
Jan



Dana Anderson wrote:
> Is this project still alive?  Nothing seems to have happened in an awfully
> long time, but I'd still love to see D for other platforms some day!
> 
> Dana
> 
> --
> Dana M. Anderson
> Athens, GA
> 
> 

-- 
ManiaC++
Jan Knepper

I'm currently reading the compiler source and shall possibly write a doc on binding back-ends to D. Maybe it shall be of use to someone with GCC knowledge.

-eye

Dana Anderson wrote:
> Is this project still alive?  Nothing seems to have happened in an awfully
> long time, but I'd still love to see D for other platforms some day!
> 
> Dana
> 
> --
> Dana M. Anderson
> Athens, GA
> 
> 

Aside from the comments of others here. The major problem I see is a rather significant shift within GCC on the backend. GIMPLE is a new twist to the gcc backend that isn't particularly well documented outside of the core GCC developers who are pretty tightly focused on the languages GCC already supports. So the task of sticking Walter's open front end on to the GCC back end is a fairly huge and daunting task with lot's and lot's of pitfalls waiting, (heck I'd even say a few chasms are hidden under thin layers there)

Another problem is that at this point D is effectively a proprietary language and all the major industry focus is on Java and .NET, native languages are "un-cool" at the moment. It's a new language with new ways of doing things and thinking about systems. Changes don't come quickly to this industry despite appearances to the contrary. (We STILL have mission critical FORTRAN and BASIC apps in existence in the world!) So really D is not much more then a curiosity at best for most developers so while they might try it out there is no real industry drive to use it. Heck there are a lot of developer's terrified of this new fangled C++ cuz it makes their brain hurt!  ("What do you mean I'm not supposed to use 'goto' for all my code branches!?")

Yes, it would be absolutely fabulous to have D for non x86 platforms especially for embedded devices With controlled garbage collection and the benefits of native code compilation combined with the ability to step outside the garbage collected world to raw memory allocations D is a fantastic language for use in real-time embedded devices. I've recently embarked on getting the x86 version of it integrated into Visual Studio.NET for use with Windows CE x86 based devices at least and am hoping somebody can get the GCC going for use on other CPUs. Maybe someday my company will have the resources to fund that effort but it certainly doesn't have it at this point in time.

-- 
Steve Maillet (eMVP)
Entelechy Consulting
smaillet_AT_EntelechyConsulting_DOT_com