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Been a while since I posted here, but thought you might be interested in an update.
OpenD continues to ship its rolling release with a focus on stability and common sense incremental improvements to the user experience.
Among the recent changes (very few of which break your existing code!) https://opendlang.org/changes.html:
- Most pointer operations are automatically checked for
null, and throw NullPointerError instead of faulting the process. More info here: https://dpldocs.info/this-week-in-d/Blog.Posted_2025_06_09.html#nullpointererror
Note that many other pointer operations require @system to ensure you aren't accidentally misusing them as part of OpenD's "safer by default".
-
Stack traces are abbreviated, trying to focus on relevant info. https://dpldocs.info/this-week-in-d/Blog.Posted_2025_05_26.html
-
with(auto x = thing) { ... }works. -
__modulesupported in ImportC, so you can make a better integrated C bridge file. -
Heredoc strings have automatic outdenting, similar to C#. See: https://dpldocs.info/this-week-in-d/Blog.Posted_2025_02_20.html#outdenting-heredoc-strings
-
import("file")will just work if file is located next to the source file. -
static foreach(...) static if(is(X Y)) ...works without redefined identifier errors. -
Tuple destructuring works.
// unpack declarations auto (a, (b, c)) = t(1, t(2, "3")); assert(t(a, b, c) == t(1, 2, "3")); -
foreach(int a, item; some_array)works, it puts out a runtime assert that some_array.length fits in anintso you don't have to cast. -
pragma(explicit_gc)lets you trigger nogc checks locally but still call other gc functions if you want.
And I think I already posted here about some of these older changes, but among other things that shipped more like a year ago:
-
OpenD IES permits
i"$foo", without parenthesis around simple interpolated variable names. -
We ship dmd and ldc together, built from the same codebase, so features come on both at the same time.
-
The compiler prohibits mutable data in static initializers, so
class A { int[] a = [1, 2, 3]; } A obj = new A; obj.a[0] = 0; A obj2 = new A; assert(obj.a[0] == 0); // this is the case upstream, but opend will make you clarify your intent with an attribute or point you toward putting the initialization in a constructor. -
Easy cross-compilation to Windows and browser via Emscripten (requires installing emscripten from their website). Likely more coming soon. https://dpldocs.info/this-week-in-d/Blog.Posted_2024_10_25.html for shipped info and https://dpldocs.info/this-week-in-d/Blog.Posted_2025_06_09.html#other-experimentation for likely next steps.
-
private(this)is available to move the privacy barrier to the class rather than the module if you need it. -
Lots of old bugs in dmd have been fixed in opend including one with classes inheriting from abstract classes that require interfaces crashing at runtime instead of being a compile error,
-liband-sharedfilenames being broken. -
extern(Objective-C) and
@sectionworks on both compilers. You might have seen the Objective-C stuff as it also shipped in upstream ldc (thanks Luna for doing the backport and fixing a couple bugs I missed!).
And more. These are generally little things that just now work the way you'd expect they always should have, so it is easy for me to even forget the changes!
You can always download the latest rolling release from here:
https://github.com/opendlang/opend/releases/tag/CI
And to keep up on changes, I try to update my blog about once a month with a summary of changes:
