"Bennie Copeland" <mugen.kano...@gmail.com> wrote in message news:mizfgcnxjpbfbclcs...@forum.dlang.org... > On Sunday, 25 March 2012 at 16:20:51 UTC, Alex Rønne Petersen wrote: >> >> About ARM support: That's not strictly true. D on ARM should work fine at >> this point in time if you build druntime/phobos in GDC >> with -fno-section-anchors (there is even some experimental Android >> support). But indeed, no iOS support. >> > > I'm still new at low level programming topics like ABI's etc, so I'll > betray my ignorance. Is the druntime only required for providing an > interface between the executable and OS resources like IO, or is it > inseparable from the language? For example, if I wrote the shell of an iOS > app in Obj-C that handled the interface with the phone software/hardware, > could the remaining core be written using D? Or is the language > capabilities like GC, slicing, mixins, etc. intimately tied to the runtime > or phobes?
Some basic things are tied into druntme/phobos. The GC is definitely one of them. AIUI, Arrays and AAs have been moving to a druntime-based implementation, and the Object class is implemented there. Technically, you can use D without druntime/phobos. Hell, druntime itself is implemented in D. And I've even done it myself ages ago ( https://www.semitwist.com/articles/article/view/d-on-gba-nds-progress-thanks-to-oopman ) . But you'd be limited to a relatively small C-like subset of the langauge (which I'd argue *can* still be worthwhile in cases where C is your only other option - like low-power embedded stuff).
