https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/12507

If you could add a C compiler to dmd with 3000 lines of code, so C code could be imported directly? I would!

My original plan was to use DMC for this. But looking at the code to it dissuaded me. It would have been more work than just starting over again, particularly because only the lexer/parser were needed.

Many times people over the years have asked me to port DMC to Linux. Ironically, this actually does that!

On Sunday, 9 May 2021 at 20:57:06 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/12507
>
> If you could add a C compiler to dmd with 3000 lines of code, so C code could be imported directly? I would!

This will be incredible. I have a lot of use cases for it. In particular on Windows where linking to DLLs is not fun.

On Sunday, 9 May 2021 at 21:50:56 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
> On Sunday, 9 May 2021 at 20:57:06 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/12507
>>
>> If you could add a C compiler to dmd with 3000 lines of code, so C code could be imported directly? I would!
>
> This will be incredible. I have a lot of use cases for it. In particular on Windows where linking to DLLs is not fun.

Can you explain this a bit better? I recall an issue with drepl on Windows was shared library support.

On 5/9/2021 2:50 PM, bachmeier wrote:
> This will be incredible. I have a lot of use cases for it. In particular on Windows where linking to DLLs is not fun.

It never occurred to me that this might be a solution to that problem (rather than adding a bunch of wacky extensions to D).

This kind of unexpected benefit is exactly why I'm doing this!

On Sunday, 9 May 2021 at 22:36:29 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> It never occurred to me that this might be a solution to that problem (rather than adding a bunch of wacky extensions to D).

This doesn't solve anything about dlls.

Meanwhile though gdc and ldc will be getting significantly improved support for these cases in a matter of months.

On Sunday, 9 May 2021 at 20:57:06 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/12507
>
> If you could add a C compiler to dmd with 3000 lines of code, so C code could be imported directly? I would!

Things which can be said in C but not understood in D (like _Atomic) should probably fail to compile or compile to some core.compat.atomic type.

On Sunday, 9 May 2021 at 22:41:23 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
> On Sunday, 9 May 2021 at 22:36:29 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> It never occurred to me that this might be a solution to that problem (rather than adding a bunch of wacky extensions to D).
>
> This doesn't solve anything about dlls.
>
> Meanwhile though gdc and ldc will be getting significantly improved support for these cases in a matter of months.

Time constrained, so short answer: it solves the problem by eliminating the need for them. If I can trivially compile C and D code together then no need to mess around with writing a DLL for an extension. It's a massive difference to give a few files of code to someone else and tell them to compile it with DMD vs telling them to figure out import libraries and language interop and put the DLL in the right directory and use mingw, blah blah blah. If I were giving you the code, none of that would be an obstacle, but the most technical thing some of them have ever done is install Python.