I recently discovered D and absolutely love it. However, I feel like I can't really be productive with it yet because of the profound lack of libraries. I understand  that linking to C libraries is trivial and linking to C++ libraries is possible (eventually easy with tools like LDC'c Calypso), but I can't help but feel that doing these things beally hampers the power of the original library. This is primarily for C++, which loses all its generic programming capabilities.

To wit, if I want to use a class `foo<T>`, I have to specialize it for every type I plan to use it for in D. This means having either a huge library or having super-human precognition. What I'm wondering is, is it possible to specialize this template for a C++API version of D's Object and then re-use it as a template on the D-side whilst preserving its generic programming properties. I'd imagine this would have the same limitations as using `void*` for generic programming in C, but it would at least allow the retention of class information thought Object's inheritance tree.

On Sun, 13 Mar 2016 12:11:12 +0000, Lyle Moffitt wrote:
> is it
> possible to specialize this template for a C++API version of D's Object

That idea would work. You probably need to define your own base class as extern(C++), though. On the plus side, that lets you add whatever you want to the interface you expose to C++.

> I'd imagine this would have the same
> limitations as using `void*` for generic programming in C, but it would
> at least allow the retention of class information thought Object's
> inheritance tree.

Should do.