On 20-06-2012 21:48, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
On 20/06/12 20:35, Alex Rønne Petersen wrote:
And x86 inline assembler... on ARM? I don't think I follow.
If I understand http://dlang.org/iasm.html correctly, the idea is that D
should have an inline assembler for each target architecture.
AFAICS what's desired is that you should be able to insert
asm
{
// target-specific assembly goes here
}
.... and have it accepted by _any_ D compiler. That seems to me to be an
important part of the language in general and even more so on
architectures that are suited to embedded systems. So while it may make
sense to cut the inline assembly in the short term for GDC, it doesn't
make sense to me for it to be a change that lasts.
GDC currently supports x86, ARM, PowerPC, MIPS, SPARC, and possibly
others. The language reference lists assembly syntax for x86. I
understand that in an ideal world, we'd have standardized assembly
syntaxes for all of these architectures, but somebody has to actually
spec and implement them.
Besides, Iain has already pointed out that the x86 syntax in the spec
doesn't integrate with GCC's inline assembly support at all (which is
why GDC had the glue code for it). It took around 2000 lines (if memory
serves) to translate the D inline assembly to GCC inline assembly. Now
imagine having to do this for every architecture ever supported.
--
Alex Rønne Petersen
a...@lycus.org
http://lycus.org
