On Monday, 4 March 2013 at 23:24:02 UTC, Rob T wrote:
One of the main selling points of the module system is to
prevent exactly what you are proposing, so I think there must
be a better solution.
Please explain. Main points of module system is to avoid
header compilation time hell and control access. I don't how
this is relevant to the topic.
This is what I read when I first read about D, modules are
supposed to be a way to get rid of the need for maintaining
separate source files, which as you stated also has the desired
side effect of getting rid of separate header files.
here's one source: http://dlang.org/overview.html
The proposal as I read it, moves us more backwards than
forwards, and it seems there's a better way as I had described.
If there's to be a solution, it should be a solution that
retains one source file. If we need a separation, it should be
automated to prevent manual duplication and maintenance hell.
I can find nothing on the topic of "separation" issue down that
link. In fact I have never met a C/C++ programmer saying fact of
having a separate headers is a problem, it was a loved feature if
anything. Problem was the way it was designed, via pre-processor.
D fixes this by introducing real symbolic imports and that is
good, but completely irrelevant to the topic of separation of
interface and implementation.
On Monday, 4 March 2013 at 06:06:14 UTC, Rob T wrote:
Manually maintaining a .di file is a bad idea for what should
be obvious reasons
No, they are not obvious at all, please explain.
I did not think that I would have to explain the difference
between manually maintaining two separate source files
containing manual duplication of code that must be kept in sync
vs manually maintaining only one source file with no manual
duplication of code.
There is close to zero code duplication. This proposal suggests
ability to import definitions from own .di file to main module
file. That means only code duplication is method names (full
signatures for overloaded ones). That actually simplifies
maintenance a lot.
