On 1/12/10 23:40, Walter Bright wrote:
Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
I hope this is not a permanent situation. Shared libraries (not
necessarily DLLs) help reduce the memory usage of all the programs on
the system that use the same libraries, and the footprint of the
binaries.
That would be reasonable once we can get libphobos installed on linux
distributions. Right now, it's easier for users to not have to deal with
version hell for shared libraries. Static linking of phobos does not
impair using D, so it is a lower priority.
The "DLL hell" versioning problem AFAIK is only on Windows,
My experience is different. There are two C shared libraries in common
use on Linux. If I link dmd to one, one group of dmd users gets annoyed,
if I link with the other, the other half gets annoyed. There's no decent
solution.
My understanding of the "no shared library" problem of D was not that
it was an anti-dll-hell feature but actually an unsolved problem with
sharing the GC. If you are saying that even if someone solves the GC
sharing problem that D still will produce mostly static exes, you
might as well take D out back and shoot it now. I don't see any
businesses using a language that is 15 years behind the curve in
library production. If it were a problem that couldn't be solved, then
there would be lots of languages that have that problem.
It's true that nobody has spent the effort to do this. Anyone is welcome
to step up and work on it.
Hasn't that already been solved with ddl:
http://www.dsource.org/projects/ddl/
On all your other points, I agree that installs these days are bigger
more because of media than binaries. I do have a problem with that in
some cases. I don't want my scanner driver software to install 500MB
of crap that I will never use when all I want to do is scan documents
with a simple interface. I don't need "skins" for my word processor or
help videos on how to use my mouse. Just install the shit that does
the work, and leave the rest of my hard drive alone :)
Heh, dlls won't solve that problem. I upgraded Nero to support a new dvd
drive, and what the heck, a 20Mb install turned into - 360Mb !!
