On Wed, 18 Apr 2012 03:02:49 -0700, Robert Clipsham
<rob...@octarineparrot.com> wrote:
On 18/04/2012 09:18, "Erèbe" wrote:
Hi,
I recently discovered that D support file interface .di, but through my
past reads I never seen someone using it. The std don't do usage of it
(compile time issue maybe ?) and most of D project are in the same case.
Is this feature depreceated ?
I'm from a C++ background, I agree on the fact that keeping declarations
and implementaions sync across two files is tedious, but when I have to
read code, I like a clean interface to summarize the thing.
Dmd doc is there to replace the need of an clean interface ?
You can find a list of deprecated features here:
http://dlang.org/deprecate
.di files are not deprecated, just rarely used. This is for a few
reasons:
* There is no requirement to use them
* They severely limit the capabilities of CTFE
(http://dlang.org/function#interpretation)
* DMD is really fast - the speed gain from using .di files isn't
noticeable for a lot of projects
* If you want them, they're very easy to generate yourself (use the
-Dd and -Df compiler switches)
* For the purposes of reading APIs, DDoc is normally used -
alternatively, all good editors and IDEs provide code folding to hide
implementations
Where DI files come in handy is for commercial libraries that don't want
to hand out their source, without DI's that's impossible, therefore for D
to be a commercially acceptable language, DI's must work, unfortunately,
DI's do not auto-generate to the this requirement right now, I have a
patch to fix that. But if you are OSS, you don't really care, just deliver
the source as the "library".
--
Adam Wilson
IRC: LightBender
Project Coordinator
The Horizon Project
http://www.thehorizonproject.org/
