On 14/06/2011 14:53, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
http://www.wikiservice.at/d/wiki.cgi?LanguageDevel/DIPs/DIP11
Destroy.
Andrei
This doesn't seem like the right solution to the problem - the correct
solution, in my opinion, is to have a build tool/package manager handle
this, not the compiler.
Problems I see:
* Remote server gets hacked, everyone using the library now
executes malicious code
* Remote source changes how it is built, your code suddenly breaks and
has to be updated, rather than being handled automatically
* Adds a lot of unnecessary bloat and/or dependency on external modules
+ Want to compress source code? dmd now depends on decompression libs
+ Want to use git? dmd now depends on git
+ Remote code uses new compression method that an older dmd doesn't
support
* Remote server is down - build takes forever while waiting
+ Make dmd time out after a couple of seconds - build fails
* Makes the assumption that the build machine is has internet
connectivity, if it doesn't building suddenly gets a lot more
complicated
* Source code changes location, build breaks unless a redirect is
possible - if it changes protocol it's useless
I could go on. I believe the real solution to this is to have (as
discussed a lot recently) a proper D package management tool like PHP's
pecl, ruby's gem or perl's cpan. Of course, this doesn't mean we have to
lose the ability to list dependencies in D etc. In fact, it seems like
the perfect opportunity to get people to switch to using D to build
projects (everyone should, I do it and it's the best build tool I've
*ever* used).
Hypothetical D Package Manager:
foobar
|
` pragma(depend, "foo", "v1.2.x");
` pragma(depend, "bar", "v1.4.3");
$ dpm install foobar
-> Do packages exist locally, are they the right version?
-> Do they exist remotely, and do the given versions exist?
-> Get the remote packages
-> Get the D Build Tool to build it (or use a binary, if available)
$ dbt build foobar
-> Is there a default.dbt or foobar.dbt file?
-> If not, attempt to build a binary, use -lib to attempt to build as
a library
-> If there is, pass it to dmd, it's actually a D file describing how
to build
Of course, the dbt file would have access to some helper functions, eg
library("myDir").build for building a library out of all the files in
myDir (should be a way to specify the files etc). dbt would obviously
take care of compiler flags/compiler etc.
I started implementing this the other day, got a few lines into a main()
then realised I didn't have enough time to build the tool I wanted :>
--
Robert
http://octarineparrot.com/
