On 10/18/2016 07:02 PM, Ali Çehreli wrote:
I have a friend who has started writing a library in D.
Although I recommended that he should use a recent dmd or ldc, he thinks
gdc is a better candidate because it's "available to the masses" through
Linux distros similar to how gcc is. Although he has a good point, the
gdc that came with his distro does not even support @nogc.
Thoughts? Can you please tell him to change his mind! :p
Ali
The last GDC release is stuck all the way back at DMDFE v2.066, which is
over two years old. Very few libs/projects are going to still be
supporting that, there's just too much limitation going back that far.
LDC had been keeping up much better.
Due to incompatibilities and necessary features/bugfixes, pretty much
all of my projects have already been forced to drop support for DMDFE
v2.066, and GDC in the process. And I *prefer* to maintain compatibility
as far back as I can.
If his lib isn't tested to support up-to-date D compilers (especially
the import changes in 2.070, but there's other stuff as well), that's
going to prevent a lot of people from being able to use his lib. So much
for availability to the masses.
And LDC (and DMD, frankly) is every bit as "available to the masses" as
GDC. The "available to the masses" just seems based more on general
perception of "GCC" being a big, major name rather than anything concrete.
