https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16746

--- Comment #11 from Vladimir Panteleev <thecybershadow@gmail.com> ---
(In reply to Matthias Klumpp from comment #10)
> Because the wrapper is not available everywhere, and going through a wrapper
> in order to fix a missing thing in dmd is just a workaround. DMD(FE) should
> be able to do this natively.
> When adding support to Meson/CMake/Automake/Makefiles, telling users that
> they need the compiler but also this other tool which - in the Meson world -
> has the sole purpose of supplying a missing functionality in DMD is pretty
> cumbersome. It's a workaround, but no real solution to the issue.

I'm not sure about referring to a requested feature as "missing functionality", but thanks for the clarification.

Regardless, we will hopefully one day have rdmd as part of dmd itself, or use the compiler as a library, so duplicating functionality in both dmd and rdmd right now does not look very appealing; until then, you may want to look into more pragmatic solutions, such as using rdmd.

> At the moment, Debian/Uhuntu/Fedora/OpenSUSE and probably a couple of other don't ehip rdmd at all, which makes demanding it just to work around this bug not worthwile anyway.

I think rdmd should be shipped in the same package as dmd. This is how the binary packages from dlang.org for all platforms are. Picking and choosing which utilities the distribution considers useful will inevitably lead to confusion and a poorer user experience.

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https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16746

--- Comment #12 from Matthias Klumpp <matthias@tenstral.net> ---
(In reply to Vladimir Panteleev from comment #11)
> (In reply to Matthias Klumpp from comment #10)
> > Because the wrapper is not available everywhere, and going through a wrapper
> > in order to fix a missing thing in dmd is just a workaround. DMD(FE) should
> > be able to do this natively.
> > When adding support to Meson/CMake/Automake/Makefiles, telling users that
> > they need the compiler but also this other tool which - in the Meson world -
> > has the sole purpose of supplying a missing functionality in DMD is pretty
> > cumbersome. It's a workaround, but no real solution to the issue.
> 
> I'm not sure about referring to a requested feature as "missing functionality", but thanks for the clarification.
> 
> Regardless, we will hopefully one day have rdmd as part of dmd itself, or use the compiler as a library, so duplicating functionality in both dmd and rdmd right now does not look very appealing; until then, you may want to look into more pragmatic solutions, such as using rdmd.

Sounds really good, but AFAIK this is still in the far future...
GDC supports writing depfiles properly, and having this feature in DMD would
enable it for DMD and LDC at the same time, making depfiles work for all D
compilers.

> > At the moment, Debian/Uhuntu/Fedora/OpenSUSE and probably a couple of other don't ehip rdmd at all, which makes demanding it just to work around this bug not worthwile anyway.
> 
> I think rdmd should be shipped in the same package as dmd. This is how the binary packages from dlang.org for all platforms are. Picking and choosing which utilities the distribution considers useful will inevitably lead to confusion and a poorer user experience.

Usually in distributions we package just the minimal amount of things necessary to compile a certain leaf package (e.g. all the stuff one needs to compile Vibe.d/Tilix/...) and more is added when another package requires the feature. At the moment, nothing uses rdmd, and adding it would mean someone would need to maintain the package over the lifetime of the distro release.

Personally I try to avoid taking on new packages on a "could be useful" basis,
because the time I can invest in maintenance is limited, and it's better to
have fewer well-supported packages than lots of them which are poorly
maintained.
(Team maintenance helps a lot with this, but only if the team is actually big
enough, which isn't the case in with D yet).

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https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16746

--- Comment #13 from Vladimir Panteleev <thecybershadow@gmail.com> ---
(In reply to Matthias Klumpp from comment #12)
> Sounds really good, but AFAIK this is still in the far future...
> GDC supports writing depfiles properly, and having this feature in DMD would
> enable it for DMD and LDC at the same time, making depfiles work for all D
> compilers.

That's true.

> Usually in distributions we package just the minimal amount of things necessary to compile a certain leaf package (e.g. all the stuff one needs to compile Vibe.d/Tilix/...) and more is added when another package requires the feature.

That makes sense if you treat D purely as a dependency, but I think it's worth looking at it as a software application package as well. rdmd is mentioned in TDPL, so it is essentially part of D. This is why I'm uneasy about the idea of splitting up the tools that dlang.org ships together.

> At the moment, nothing uses rdmd, and adding it would mean someone would need to maintain the package over the lifetime of the distro release.

Why a separate package? Why not ship it with dmd? Is it just because it's useful not just for dmd, but also ldc/gdc? If so, why not have a dtools package like Arch Linux, which includes rdmd, dustmite, ddemangle, etc.?

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https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16746

Jakub Szewczyk <kubasz51@gmail.com> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
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                 CC|                            |kubasz51@gmail.com

--- Comment #14 from Jakub Szewczyk <kubasz51@gmail.com> ---
I went ahead and implemented support for -M, -MD, -MF=..., -MT=... flags which generate Makefile-style depfiles from DMDFE itself. https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/6961

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https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16746

Benjamin Schaaf <ben.schaaf@gmail.com> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
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                 CC|                            |ben.schaaf@gmail.com

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https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16746

Atila Neves <atila.neves@gmail.com> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
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             Status|NEW                         |RESOLVED
                 CC|                            |atila.neves@gmail.com
         Resolution|---                         |DUPLICATE

--- Comment #15 from Atila Neves <atila.neves@gmail.com> ---


*** This issue has been marked as a duplicate of issue 14188 ***

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