On Friday, 22 November 2013 at 13:36:08 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:
> I don't have any issue with Java and do like the language, but it has lost its place if you care about portable code across mobile platforms.

Ironic, much? :p

Am 22.11.2013 17:15, schrieb John Colvin:
> On Friday, 22 November 2013 at 13:36:08 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:
>> I don't have any issue with Java and do like the language, but it has
>> lost its place if you care about portable code across mobile platforms.
>
> Ironic, much? :p

Sadly yes. There is hope with RoboVM, but that is community driven.

Oracle seems more interested into pushing HTML5 frontends with Java running on the server side.

Last year that made some PR announcements about Java support for iOS and Android. When what they actually had was an ADF web application!

--
Paulo

I haven't tried it, but here is an idea to target the JVM:

- use ldc `-output-ll` option to generate LLVM IR.
- use the LLJVM backend to generate some Jasmin assembly code from the LLVM IR ( as described on https://github.com/davidar/lljvm)
- link with the LLJVM linker.

This may produce some java bytecode, but to have something working properly I suppose the D runtime should also be compiled along with Phobos.

This may be a faster way to get to the JVM than writing a source translator. However, this is not the best way to get Java compatability since it does not seems to be possible to access the Java library from the input D code.

On Friday, 15 November 2013 at 07:13:34 UTC, Jeremy DeHaan wrote:
> Hey everyone!
>
> I have been experimenting for the past couple of days with an idea I had, and since I recently made a little progress I thought I would share some of what I have been doing with you. What I have done, in a nutshell, is began the process for a language converter that takes D source files, converts them into Java source files, and then compiles them as Java class files so that they can be ran on Java's VM. It is extremely limited in what it can do right now, only being able to convert/compile a simple Hello World program, but I was proud of myself for getting even that far so I wanted to brag. :P
>
> You may want to ask, "Hey, man. D is a great language. Why would I ever want to convert it to Java?" Normally, you wouldn't. Java blows. What I am envisioning for this project is something quite magical in my opinion. If we can take D code and have it compile into Java class files, we can then compile them into Android dex files. This would make D able to build and run on Android devices through its VM. Sure, people are working on getting D to compile to ARM binaries, but this could be another option as a Java alternative on Android.(eventually)
>
> Unfortunately I do not know much about compilers, but even in the last couple of days I feel like I have learned a great deal about what kinds of stuff goes into them. Eventually I'd like to make a full blown compiler that takes D code and can go right to dex files, but that would be something that would happen way down the road. In order to get D working on Android sooner, I figured a language converter would be the easier route.
>
> I can, and would love to go in to more detail about this, but it is getting late and this post is already quite long. Maybe I should start a blog about my D escapades? Anyways, I would love to hear feedback on this idea! Thanks for your time!