On Thursday, 18 February 2016 at 06:57:01 UTC, Kai Nacke wrote:
even if DMD is the official reference compiler, the download
page http://dlang.org/download.html already mentions "strong
optimization" as pro of GDC/LDC vs. "very fast compilation
speeds" as pro of DMD.
If we would make GDC or LDC the official compiler then the next
question which pops up is about compilation speed....
Yeah. dmd's compilation speed has been a huge win for us and
tends to make a very good first impression. And as far as
development goes, fast compilation speed matters a lot more than
fast binaries. So, assuming that they're compatible enough (which
ideally they are but aren't always), I would argue that the best
approach would be to use dmd to develop your code and then use
gdc or ldc to build the production binary. We benefit by having
all of these compilers, and I seriously question that changing
which one is the "official" one is going to help any. It just
shifts which set of complaints we get.
Regardless, dmd's backend was written by Walter and is the one
he's worked on for something like 25 years. I would be shocked if
he were to switch to something else now. And actually, he'd risk
legal problems if he did, because he doesn't want anyone to be
able to accuse him of taking code from gcc or llvm. Yes, dmc/dmd
has failed to keep up with gcc/gdc and llvm/ldc in terms of
optimizations, because there are far fewer people working on it,
but it compiles way faster than they do. There are advantages to
each, and as long as that's clear, and we treat gdc and ldc as
least semi-official, I think that we're fine. If anything, the
problem is probably that the gdc and ldc folks could use more
help, but dmd and Phobos suffer from that problem on some level
as well, albeit probably not as acutely.
- Jonathan M Davis
