Hi all!

I am trying to compile D code for MinGW and *BSD. Of course, I am using LDC.
The situation is a bit chaotic.

For MinGW, the compiler defines the versions Windows, Win32 and MinGW.
For *BSD, the compiler defines the *BSD version (FreeBSD/DragonFlyBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD) and Posix.

If you try to compile druntime/Phobos:
- it compiles on FreeBSD :-)
- all other *BSD variants cause compile errors
- there are still some version(MinGW) sections in druntime but most of them moved to CRuntime_DigitalMars / CRuntime_Microsoft sections and are not available.

I like to clean this up. But what is the best way? Options are:

- create new sections for MinGW/DragonFlyBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD and duplicate the definitions.
- define new C runtimes for MinGW (CRuntime_MinGW) and *BSD (CRuntime_libc).

MinGW/CRuntime_MinGW is a mix between the Windows and the GNU libraries. This requires some work.
CRuntime_libc could be used to consolidate the current code. As far as I know, BSD libc is also used by OS X and Solaris. This could reduce the amount of definitions.

Are there other solutions? What do you think?

Regards,
Kai

On Saturday, 3 October 2015 at 15:02:24 UTC, Kai Nacke wrote:
> If you try to compile druntime/Phobos:
> - it compiles on FreeBSD :-)
> - all other *BSD variants cause compile errors

This is because only FreeBSD is actually defined everywhere.  The other BSDs are rarely mentioned, if at all.

> - there are still some version(MinGW) sections in druntime but most of them moved to CRuntime_DigitalMars / CRuntime_Microsoft sections and are not available.

I don't know anything about MinGW, but there was some discussion on how to handle it when CRuntime_Glibc was added late last year:

https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dmd/pull/4111#issuecomment-66908355

> I like to clean this up. But what is the best way? Options are:
>
> - create new sections for MinGW/DragonFlyBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD and duplicate the definitions.
> - define new C runtimes for MinGW (CRuntime_MinGW) and *BSD (CRuntime_libc).
>
> MinGW/CRuntime_MinGW is a mix between the Windows and the GNU libraries. This requires some work.
> CRuntime_libc could be used to consolidate the current code. As far as I know, BSD libc is also used by OS X and Solaris. This could reduce the amount of definitions.

While they all have common ancestry from the original BSD libc out of Berkeley, they have all been forked and I doubt they have much in common nowadays.  The main reason we used different CRuntimes so far was because one kernel/OS used different libc's.  This is definitely true for the linux kernel, as almost all desktop and server linux uses glibc, while all mobile linux kernels use bionic.  Windows is a special case, because dmd comes with Walter's libc.  I don't think other OS's use different libc's much.

Of course, there's always an argument that it's easier to club together some libc's and that libc APIs should be separated from core OS APIs in general.  I don't know how true the first argument is, while the second may be a fair amount of work for not much gain.

> Are there other solutions? What do you think?

It would be really nice if we could automate all this, using Dstep as much as possible.  As for organizing by using one BSD libc, it all depends on how similar the libc's really are.  I doubt it'd help, but I don't know.

On Sunday, 4 October 2015 at 10:46:24 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> I don't think other OS's use different libc's much.

AFAIK, in the case of all of the *nixes other than Linux, libc is part of the OS itself (certainly, that's the case with the BSDs, Illumos, and Solaris), so the only way you'd have an alternate libc is for it to be a compatibility layer on top of the actual libc. So, in almost all cases, the OS and the libc stuff is inextricably tied. Similarly, the libc across those OSes is not shared, because it's part of the OS. So, while they're going to be very similar, each of the BSDs are going to need to have their libc's treated as different entities rather than being lumped together under the same version. Each one will have to be added to druntime on its own if we're going to support it.

- Jonathan M Davis