Hello Derek,
On Sat, 20 Dec 2008 18:45:24 +0100, Lars Ivar Igesund wrote:
bearophile wrote:
Walter Bright:
Excess isn't the problem, I want to see if import cycles is.
Generally all the modules in my dlibs import each other. This is
nearly unavoidable, if a module contains string functions, and
another one contains math stuff, the string module will want to use
some math stuff and the math module may need string representations
and processing. In the D specs I haven't seen an advice to not use
cyclic imports, so I don't want such compiler flag, I prefer a
compiler able to manage such cyclic imports efficiently.
Cyclic imports is very often a sign of bad design, it typically mean
(if it is unavoidable), that the modules shouldn't be separated in
the first place. And in D it _is_ a bad idea because static
initialization cannot depend on each other, that is cyclic imports of
modules with static ctors.
Just thinking out aloud ...
If two modules import each other and this can be 'fixed' by instead
having both modules as a single module, what is stopping the compiler
from just pretending that they are a single module for compilation
purposes?
This does assume that they are to be compiled at the same time rather
than one-file-at-a-time.
Interesting idea. :)
Maybe there would be issues with module ctors and __FILE__/__LINE__ expressions
too?
Also it may mess up module info, debug, and other object attributes.
-JJR
