On 2012-12-17 10:13, eles wrote:
WRT to all opinions above (ie: binary vs text, what to put etc.)
I had some reflection on that some time ago: how about bundling a
"header" file (that would be the .di file) and a binary file (the
compiled .d file, that is the .obj file) into a single .zip (albeit with
another extension), that will be recognized and processed by the D
compiler (let's name that file a .dobj).
Idea may seem a bit crazy, but consider the following:
-the standard .zip format could be used by a user of that object/library
to learn the interface of the functions provided by the object (just
like a C header file)
-if he's a power user, he can simply extract the .zip/.dobj, modify the
included header (adding comments, for example), then archive that back
and present the compiler a "fresh" .dobj/library file
Sounds a lot like frameworks and other type of bundles on Mac OS X. A
framework is a folder, with the .framework extension, containing a
dynamic library, header files and all other necessary resource files
like images and so on.
The responsability of maintaining the .obj and the header in sync will
be of the compiler or of the power user, if the latter edit it manually.
More, IDEs could simply extract relevant header information from the
.zip archive and use it for code completion, documentation and so all.
Basically, this would be like bundling a .h file with the corresponding
.obj file (if we speak C++), all that under a transparent format. The
code is hidden and obfuscated, just like in a standard library (think
-lstdc++ vs <iostream>). The use of a single file greatly facilitate
synchronization, while the use of the standard .zip format allow a
plethora of tools to manually tune the file (if desired).
This can be extended also to entire .dlib (that is, archive of .dobjs),
which can become self-documenting, that way. I kinda of dreamt about
that since programming in C++ and always needed to have the headers and
the libs with me. Why do not include the headers in the lib, in a
transparent and manually readable/editable format?
A checksum could guarantee also that the header information and the
binary information are in sync inside the .zip archive.
What do you think?
In general I think it's better to have a package manager handle this.
--
/Jacob Carlborg
