I read an interesting news about LLVM :
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTQ1NjI

It's certainly a great things for ldc too.

Is there a hope to see ldc as the main D compiler if it's full featured under Windows?

Am 07.09.2013 15:20, schrieb Flamaros:
> I read an interesting news about LLVM :
> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTQ1NjI
>
> It's certainly a great things for ldc too.
>
> Is there a hope to see ldc as the main D compiler if it's full featured
> under Windows?

I doubt that LDC has compile times that are 3-5 times longer then those of DMD (even in debug without optimization). D advertises with short compile times, so unless LDC improves I don't see this happening. And thats only one of the points.

Kind Regards
Benjamin Thaut

On 9/7/2013 9:42 AM, Benjamin Thaut wrote:
> I doubt that LDC has compile times that are 3-5 times longer then those of DMD
> (even in debug without optimization). D advertises with short compile times, so
> unless LDC improves I don't see this happening. And thats only one of the points.


Having 3 different D compilers with different strengths and weaknesses spurs improvements in all of them. When I was at GoingNative2013, it was pretty obvious to me that the playful and friendly competition between gcc, clang, and vc has improved all three greatly.

On Sat, 2013-09-07 at 10:08 -0700, Walter Bright wrote: […]
> Having 3 different D compilers with different strengths and weaknesses spurs improvements in all of them. When I was at GoingNative2013, it was pretty obvious to me that the playful and friendly competition between gcc, clang, and vc has improved all three greatly.

As has been proved in many areas of life, having multiple players in a game validates the game. Having multiple compilers, books, IDEs etc. for D programming is a mark that D is player in the programming languages game.

Sadly D is still not competing against C++ in the way it deserves. Of course C++ is now a niche language. The primary "war" just now is native vs. VM, and VM remains in the ascendency. Go and Rust are the "poster children" for native due to their backers. The questions is whether D should position itself in this "war". I say yes.

There needs to be more books on D, and use of D in various areas. QtD, GtkD, (wxD?), D drivers for SQL, Mongo, Couch, Redis, Neo, Riak, etc. all need to be high quality and pushed via reports and talks at non-D conferences. Vibe.d is a huge possibility now that Node.js is losing it's "lustre" and Vert.x and Go are getting serious traction. (At least in the small start-ups arena.)

D in GCC and D on LLVM are, for me, far more important than DMD, since they provide penetration into the market via the market leaders. D on Linux via GCC and LLVM, D on OX S via LLVM, (and on Windows, I suppose, via any route :-).

The issue for me is to stop worrying about internal contemplative reflection on 10 years of D evolution, and get knowledge of the real-world use of D out there and in people's faces. Stop looking inward and start looking outward. This is the trick Go and Rust have picked up, albeit not as well as they could.  D is a major player in the GCC and LLVM worlds, let's take this as read and exploit it for the future of high-quality, effective and pleasurable native code development.

-- 
Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel@winder.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder

On Saturday, 7 September 2013 at 19:35:47 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
> On Sat, 2013-09-07 at 10:08 -0700, Walter Bright wrote:
> […]
>> Having 3 different D compilers with different strengths and weaknesses spurs improvements in all of them. When I was at GoingNative2013, it was pretty obvious to me that the playful and friendly competition between gcc, clang, and vc has improved all three greatly.
>
> As has been proved in many areas of life, having multiple players in a
> game validates the game. Having multiple compilers, books, IDEs etc. for
> D programming is a mark that D is player in the programming languages
> game.
>
> Sadly D is still not competing against C++ in the way it deserves. Of
> course C++ is now a niche language. The primary "war" just now is native
> vs. VM, and VM remains in the ascendency. Go and Rust are the "poster
> children" for native due to their backers. The questions is whether D
> should position itself in this "war". I say yes.
>
> There needs to be more books on D, and use of D in various areas. QtD,
> GtkD, (wxD?), D drivers for SQL, Mongo, Couch, Redis, Neo, Riak, etc.
> all need to be high quality and pushed via reports and talks at non-D
> conferences. Vibe.d is a huge possibility now that Node.js is losing
> it's "lustre" and Vert.x and Go are getting serious traction. (At least
> in the small start-ups arena.)
>
> D in GCC and D on LLVM are, for me, far more important than DMD, since
> they provide penetration into the market via the market leaders. D on
> Linux via GCC and LLVM, D on OX S via LLVM, (and on Windows, I suppose,
> via any route :-).

That also my concern, LLVM tends to replace gcc as C/C++ compiler.
LLVM promise to simplify languages compatibility, Apple show us how
much is important to improve developers productivity.
Google think in the same way with the Go.

I think the LLVM message is :
developers would be more productive if compiler generate better reports, can aggregate more pieces of software and have better tools (IDE, static analyzer, debugger).

In this way D and LLVM philosophies seems compatible.


> The issue for me is to stop worrying about internal contemplative
> reflection on 10 years of D evolution, and get knowledge of the
> real-world use of D out there and in people's faces. Stop looking inward
> and start looking outward. This is the trick Go and Rust have picked up,
> albeit not as well as they could.  D is a major player in the GCC and
> LLVM worlds, let's take this as read and exploit it for the future of
> high-quality, effective and pleasurable native code development.

Not to mention the importance of ARM support.

On 7 September 2013 23:20, Flamaros <flamaros.xavier@gmail.com> wrote:

> I read an interesting news about LLVM : http://www.phoronix.com/scan.**php?page=news_item&px=MTQ1NjI<http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTQ1NjI>
>
> It's certainly a great things for ldc too.
>
> Is there a hope to see ldc as the main D compiler if it's full featured under Windows?
>

This sounds like good news. I'm very interested to hear more news from LLDB. It will be a marvelous day when LDC 'just works' on Windows. No worrying about object/library formats, exception handling, runtime libraries, or debuginfo compatibility.

On Monday, 9 September 2013 at 10:29:56 UTC, Chris wrote:
> Not to mention the importance of ARM support.

It's an evidence that is a major target today. :-)

I work only on ARM compatible application for my day job, that why DQuick is tough to be easy to port those devices.

On Monday, 9 September 2013 at 15:56:17 UTC, Flamaros wrote:
> On Monday, 9 September 2013 at 10:29:56 UTC, Chris wrote:
>> Not to mention the importance of ARM support.
>
> It's an evidence that is a major target today. :-)
>
> I work only on ARM compatible application for my day job, that why DQuick is tough to be easy to port those devices.

We'll need ARM support too for our applications, sooner or later.

On Tuesday, 10 September 2013 at 08:36:21 UTC, Chris wrote:
> On Monday, 9 September 2013 at 15:56:17 UTC, Flamaros wrote:
>> On Monday, 9 September 2013 at 10:29:56 UTC, Chris wrote:
>>> Not to mention the importance of ARM support.
>>
>> It's an evidence that is a major target today. :-)
>>
>> I work only on ARM compatible application for my day job, that why DQuick is tough to be easy to port those devices.
>
> We'll need ARM support too for our applications, sooner or later.

Are you telling it's a need for D community or for your company?

If it's for D community I hope be able to help a little when compilers will be ready.