On Saturday, 19 December 2015 at 00:52:40 UTC, Jakob Jenkov wrote:
To be exact it doesn't need the sources, it needs the function
signatures and type definitions so the equivalent of C header
files. If you don't want to share the full sources with your
library you can generate those header files automatically
using the -H flag in dmd. It will produce a "D interface" file
with a "di" extension.
But - if the library was open source, it would be better to
just share the sources than a compiled file? (In Java we
share/use the zipped JAR file with compiled classes).
If it's open source it's better to share the sources, sure. As
the compiler is able to do more optimization when it has all the
sources at hand it is customary to limit the use of shared
libraries and just compile everything at once (although you can
quickly run into things like memory limitations as it demands
quite a lot of resources). Typically you'd segment your
compilation by module if needed.
If you are to give the sources (with or without a standalone lib)
then you allow your users to benefit from such optimizations if
they want to, so it's better to give the sources when possible. D
Interface files are there mostly (only?) to answer the
problematic of closed source libraries.
