On Friday, 26 February 2016 at 03:19:26 UTC, mahdi wrote:
Great! Thanks.
I was looking for a feature like `jar` files in Java or
`assemblies` in C# where all compiled code and metadata/symbols
are stored together inside a single binary file.
I think same can be implemented for D language and it won't
break any code because it is not touching the language itself,
but the compiler.
The magic in Java isn't from Jar files, but from the fact that
class binaries are distributed as byte code. All of the
information from the source is still there. The compiler can
learn everything it needs to know about imported classes simply
by reading the byte code instead of the source.
In the model that D uses, I don't know enough about object file
formats to know how much information would still be available if
they were used at compile time, but I'm fairly certain it
wouldn't allow the use of templates. There was a project several
years ago that allowed loading D classes dynamically from object
files, but I suspect if it were practical to use object files at
compile time in the same way Java class files are used, someone
would have implemented such a thing already (in C and C++ as
well).
That said, it might be an interesting enhancement for the
compiler to support reading source or interface files from zip
archives (which is I know is what you're getting at), allowing
the required imports and the binary to be located in one place so
that only a single path need be passed on the command line to
find everything.
