Jeremie Pelletier wrote:
Well I've decided to get a look at the dmd2 source and see what I can
contribute to it, only to notice it is very VC++ unfriendly. After a
few hours of work, I finally got it to compile, and it works great,
for the most part.
VC++ has no real support for long double; it supports the syntax as
distinct types but they are implemented as double precision, not
extended precision. There are no stdint.h and fenv.h headers, I found
isnan() in float.h but I had to leave out backend/strtold.c for now,
there was no unresolved references from this. alloca() was also found
in malloc.h, not stdlib.h. The joys of not using a C99 compliant
compiler heh. I also couldn't get the compiler to compile *.c as C++,
even with the /TP switch (Compile as C++), I had to rename every file
to *.cpp.
Other than that, it was standard compilation, I disabled a few
warnings to not get my output flooded, defined MARS, __I86__ and _DH,
generated the different table files, and compiled, all from within
the IDE.
What are the advantages of VC++? Just the browsing?
Jumping back in C++ reminded me why I loved D so much, I will
definitely start working on, or help developing it if already
planned, a D port of dmd once the spec gets stable.
Oh yeah. Looking at the source, I keep thinking, "this would be SO much
easier in D!".
Interestingly since DMD has extern(C++), it ought to be possible to
convert a single module to D, and still link it in...
In any ways, I am wondering where I can submit my changes for review,
since I doubt there is any public access to the repository on
dsource, and I would very much like to contribute to the D
programming language.
It'd be fantastic if you could help.
I've just been submitting my patches to Bugzilla. Walter sends me his
source from time to time. If you get active enough with patches we'll
make a better arrangement. It's only yesterday that Walter made a commit
to the repository for the first time, so at least he has it set up now <g>.
I suggest that to start off, you look at the .stringof bugs. .stringof
has a reputation as one of the most buggy features in the compiler, but
I think it's only because of neglect rather than being particularly
complicated.
