On Friday, 27 October 2017 at 01:40:07 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> On Friday, October 27, 2017 01:12:53 codephantom via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> VS is the most bloated piece of crap that's ever come out of
>> Microsoft!
>> Why encourage/force D developers to use it?
>
> The problem is that to reasonably interact with the rest of the Windows C/C++ ecosystem, you're pretty much stuck using Microsoft's linker. If we can get that without pulling in all of VS, all the better, but without the linker, we can't link with most existing C/C++ code, which is a big problem. Before we could use MS' linker, we had complaints for years about not being compatible with other C/C++ stuff on Windows.
>
> MS simply has not set things up in a way that makes it reasonable to avoid VS if you want to link with C/C++ libraries - especially since VS is all most C/C++ projects on Windows target at this point.
>
> - Jonathan M Davis

I'm not sure about WinSDK 10, but previous versions has all the libs and tools necessary(linker!) and is much smaller download(500 MB or so)

IIRC the problem is that DMD installer won't pick up SDK install path, and most newcomers neither has the knowledge of sc.ini nor the desire to mess with it.

On Thursday, 26 October 2017 at 20:44:49 UTC, Adam Wilson wrote:
> The XCode installer DMG is 5GB, before unpacking. And unlike VS17, I can't pick and choose. :)

1 hour, 7 minutes later...

1:11pm
layout progres..45.43%

(2.55GB downloaded...so far)

I'll got get some lunch and come back to it...

On Friday, October 27, 2017 02:00:53 evilrat via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Friday, 27 October 2017 at 01:40:07 UTC, Jonathan M Davis
>
> wrote:
> > On Friday, October 27, 2017 01:12:53 codephantom via
> >
> > Digitalmars-d wrote:
> >> VS is the most bloated piece of crap that's ever come out of
> >> Microsoft!
> >> Why encourage/force D developers to use it?
> >
> > The problem is that to reasonably interact with the rest of the Windows C/C++ ecosystem, you're pretty much stuck using Microsoft's linker. If we can get that without pulling in all of VS, all the better, but without the linker, we can't link with most existing C/C++ code, which is a big problem. Before we could use MS' linker, we had complaints for years about not being compatible with other C/C++ stuff on Windows.
> >
> > MS simply has not set things up in a way that makes it reasonable to avoid VS if you want to link with C/C++ libraries - especially since VS is all most C/C++ projects on Windows target at this point.
> >
> > - Jonathan M Davis
>
> I'm not sure about WinSDK 10, but previous versions has all the
> libs and tools necessary(linker!) and is much smaller
> download(500 MB or so)
>
> IIRC the problem is that DMD installer won't pick up SDK install path, and most newcomers neither has the knowledge of sc.ini nor the desire to mess with it.

Well, if it's possible to use an SDK instead of VS, then ideally, we'd support with the installer that rather than requiring that VS be there, but obviously, someone will have to do the work to improve the installer.

Personally, I'm really not a Windows dev, though I've had to use Visual Studio for work often enough, so my understanding of what other SDKs might exist from Microsoft is quite poor. I've only ever used Windows for development when I've had to.

- Jonathan M Davis

On 10/26/17 5:23 AM, Steven Schveighoffer via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 10/26/17 7:09 AM, Mike Parker wrote:
>> I also didn't like that I had to install the Xcode tools on my Mac, but that's needed for any development on Mac from what I can see.
> 
> Want to hear something scary? The autotester does not use xcode tools :)
> 
> In fact, I've been meaning to bug Brad about checking to see if things have improved (xcode's compiler used to generate a dmd that would fail some of the tests). I've never used gnu gcc, only ever Xcode's compiler (which is llvm).
> 
> -Steve

Actually, one of the 3 macos boxes is using stock xcode tooling these days.  I specifically went that direction when setting up a new system that replaced one that died on me (well, it boots but if I actually _use_ it it crashes, sigh).

So, but on the older osx releases (not positive the exact versions off the top of my head) there were issues that forced us back to an old gcc version rather than the default clang compiler.

On 26/10/2017 10:38 PM, MrSmith wrote:
> On Thursday, 26 October 2017 at 17:02:40 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
>> That's exactly the kind of developer background I'm thinking of. Getting permission to redistribute from MS would be the ideal solution. If not, I'm sure someone will find a way to make it work with the LLVM or MinGW tools eventually.
> 
> Would it be possible to create import libs that for all winapi/crt libs, and redistribute them? Will such libs be legal to redist?
> We have the tools (DMD/LLD), but the dependency on winsdk and VS libs is still there, unfortunatelly.

Those files should be included with the request to Microsoft.

On Thursday, 26 October 2017 at 20:44:49 UTC, Adam Wilson wrote:
> The XCode installer DMG is 5GB, before unpacking. And unlike VS17, I can't pick and choose. :)


here is an update...( objective: Write some code in D, and build a 64bit .exe)

started downloading offline install of vs2017 buildtools at: 12:04pm

finished downloading them at: 3:25pm (actual time it finished, not the time I came back to it).

so...3 hours and 20 min later... I have an offline installation of build tools

6.83GB
3791 files
1919 folders

let's try installing those buildtools . 3.55pm (when I got back to the pc)

vs_BuildTools.exe
(setup window pops up....says "Give us a minute..we'll be done soon."... but then disappears a few seconds later)

what's going on...try again..same thing..try again..nope...

turns out I had disabled my internet connection, and setup needs to use it for some reason, or the setup windows just disappears without telling the user anything).

(I expect setup need the internet to verify certificates or something - I think you can install them manually too, in offline mode)...but gee...I wish setup had told me something..anything!!

ok...so enabled internet connection, and try vs_BuildTools.exe....

> vs_BuildTools.exe  (ok...were off..installing 379MB)

..so what is the other 6.5GB needed for then?

4:03pm - build tools installed. pc needs to restart....

booted up..ready to go..lets try installing dmd again..

error: For 64-bit support MSVC and Windows SDK are needed but no compatible version were found.Do you want to install VS2013?

No. I do not!

Let's continue installing DMD anyway....oh another message pops up...Could not detect Visual Studio (2008-2017 are supported). No 64-bit support.

That's it!

I've had enough!

4 hours wasted!

On Friday, 27 October 2017 at 02:20:54 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> Well, if it's possible to use an SDK instead of VS, then ideally, we'd support with the installer that rather than requiring that VS be there, but obviously, someone will have to do the work to improve the installer.
>
> Personally, I'm really not a Windows dev, though I've had to use Visual Studio for work often enough, so my understanding of what other SDKs might exist from Microsoft is quite poor. I've only ever used Windows for development when I've had to.
>
> - Jonathan M Davis

A while back I played with the idea of a VS replacement for D and I made some progress using this:
http://www.smorgasbordet.com/pellesc/

I managed to swap out the VS linker and use the included linker to build a 64-bit D binary, but that was as far as I got at the time.

It's not open source, but the terms of use are pretty permissive. Maybe it's worth taking another look.

On 2017-10-26 12:16, Adam Wilson wrote:

> How many though? 

It's not like I've been counting, but more than one.

> Also, we have to do it for macOS, why is Windows special? The macOS setup was just as hard. Download two large packages (XCode+Cmd tools), install, and done.

I'm not saying Windows is special. I tried to use DMD and Visual Studio together, it didn't work that well. I did not use the DMD installation, I already had DMD installed (using DVM). I did not know the exact paths/environment variables to use for DMD to find the Visual Studio tool chain. I also recall finding it very difficult to find the download for the SDK, it was not included in the Visual Studio installation I used.

I did not have these problems on macOS, but perhaps that's just me, I'm not a Windows developer.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On 2017-10-26 13:32, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

> A wizard-style installation with links to things and a good flow might help a lot here. Is that possible? -- Andrei

Xcode can only, officially, be obtained from the Mac App Store or Apple's developer web site, which a (free) account is required to be able to access. I guess it's possible to link to the Mac App Store Xcode page, but I don't think it's possible to automatically download Xcode.

Then the user usually need to install the Xcode command line tools as well.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On 2017-10-27 04:34, Brad Roberts wrote:

> Actually, one of the 3 macos boxes is using stock xcode tooling these days.  I specifically went that direction when setting up a new system that replaced one that died on me (well, it boots but if I actually _use_ it it crashes, sigh).
> 
> So, but on the older osx releases (not positive the exact versions off the top of my head) there were issues that forced us back to an old gcc version rather than the default clang compiler.

I haven't been using GCC in years and I never had any problems with compiling DMD using Clang.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg