BCS wrote:
Hello dsimcha,
For
the lower-level systems programming case, the requirement for a
runtime (even if it's a fairly lightweight one) and the lack of fine
control over things like binary size (due to templates, etc.) will
limit usefulness. Yes, these problems can be worked around, but doing
so requires sticking to so much of a C-like subset that you may as
well just use C.
Maybe someone should make a DMD-EE ("embedded edition") with a truly
minimal runtime and library along with a compiler patched to support it
(e.g. no GC, no AA's, no hidden memory allocations, no new/delete,
D-ified versions of the c std lib). The DMD patch shouldn't be to hard,
the runtime would mostly amount to dropping stuff and the lib would
mostly just copy some stuff from phobos and wrapping, porting or binding
(depending on what's more reasonable) stuff from C.
I'd offer to do it but I have almost no experience in any of those.
There's not a whole lot of point to do this, other than checking a box, because
embedded systems developers have no problem doing this themselves (create a
custom runtime library).
