On 7 December 2017 at 13:35, Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d <digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:

On 12/7/2017 11:41 AM, Manu wrote:

Misuse of the API; ie, a runtime call, will result in an unsuspecting user getting a surprising link error, rather than a nice compile-time error explaining what they did wrong...

I think Nicholas is talking about functions for which code cannot be generated.

In any case, in C/C++/D if you call functions in .h files (or imports) that are not linked in, you'll get a linker error.

Right, but that's what I'm saying; using your solution of putting a function in a module that's not compiled to inhibit code generation won't inhibit people from *attempting* to making runtime calls (and getting link errors)... whereas a compile error trying to runtime-call a function that shouldn't be runtime-called might be more desirable.

I'm not actually registering support for @ctfeonly, just that I think it's a pattern that I have wanted and should be supported in some way, and a compile-time error would be nicer than a link error.