Re: Why the DMD Backend?
On Friday, 28 November 2014 at 20:14:07 UTC, LeakingAntonovPlane wrote: DDMD, bootstraping. LDC and GDC are not written in D. Pretty sure that DDMD project is not a translation of the backend and is only the shared front end source code.
Re: Why the DMD Backend?
On Friday, 28 November 2014 at 19:59:40 UTC, Xinok wrote: Given that we have GDC with the GCC backend and LDC with the LLVM backend, what are the benefits of keeping the DMD compiler backend? It seems to me that GCC and LLVM are far more developed and better supported by their respective communities. They have superior optimizers and are better equipped for migrating D to new platforms. On the other hand, from what I gather, there's lots of work to be done on DMD on improving support for x64 Windows and ARM. It's a genuine question, which is why I posted this to D.learn. I don't follow development on the backend and overall I'm unfamiliar with compilers, so I'm not sure what the benefits are of the D community continuing to maintain it's own backend. As others have said already, the reasons why I use dmd are: 1. short compilation times which is important when coding both big projects and little test programs (i.e. fast prototyping). Nothing more annoying than having to wait for ages after you've made a few minor changes to your code. From a PR point of view, this is important, because it gives D an advantage over other compiled languages and defeats the argument that scripting languages like Python don't have long compilation times. 2. dmd works out of the box on all supported OSes. You download it and are basically ready to go. GDC and LDC require a bit more work in this respect, especially on Windows (which can be a deal breaker for newcomers who are curious about the language). As for the speed, I think that dmd is not too bad in most cases. I have a project I wanted to compile with LDC or GDC for the release build, but didn't, because the dmd version is already very responsive. So I decided to leave well enough alone (at least for now). The thing about ARM is admittedly a chagrin in the behind. But what can you do.
Re: Why the DMD Backend?
Chris: As others have said already, the reasons why I use dmd are: Walter has developed the back-end of DMD and he wants to keep using it no matter what. But I love the very small compilation time of dmd sources. Bye, bearophile
Re: Why the DMD Backend?
On Tuesday, 2 December 2014 at 10:37:18 UTC, bearophile wrote: Chris: As others have said already, the reasons why I use dmd are: Walter has developed the back-end of DMD and he wants to keep using it no matter what. But I love the very small compilation time of dmd sources. Bye, bearophile What I was trying to say is that I would be very disappointed if we didn't have the dmd backend anymore. It would be a real pain in the backend.
Re: Why the DMD Backend?
It's only words. If we speak about LDC it can compile fast in debug mode with performance average to DMD's backend but with much great performance in release mode thanks to vectorization and other techniques. Also LDC thanks to LLVM supports X86, X86-64, PowerPC, PowerPC-64, ARM, Thumb, SPARC, Alpha, CellSPU, MIPS, MSP430, SystemZ, and XCore platforms. And what about DMD? Only x86 and x86-64. Just link LLVM statically with LDC and LDC will work out of the box as DMD. No problems at both Windows and Linux.
Re: Why the DMD Backend?
On Tuesday, 2 December 2014 at 10:57:20 UTC, Temtaime wrote: It's only words. If we speak about LDC it can compile fast in debug mode with performance average to DMD's backend but with much great performance in release mode thanks to vectorization and other techniques. Also LDC thanks to LLVM supports X86, X86-64, PowerPC, PowerPC-64, ARM, Thumb, SPARC, Alpha, CellSPU, MIPS, MSP430, SystemZ, and XCore platforms. And what about DMD? Only x86 and x86-64. Just link LLVM statically with LDC and LDC will work out of the box as DMD. No problems at both Windows and Linux. That's good to hear. I never opposed to LDC nor GCD. In fact, LDC has the much needed support for other architectures. But the fact remains that dmd is a nice-to-have tool that works out of the box, and I don't see why there shouldn't be a dmd backend only because we have two other compilers. It always sounds as if a dmd backend somehow harmed the other two compilers. Also, one has to set up the LLVM infrastructure etc., which is an extra step, unless LLVM works out of the box on Windows, which I might not be aware right now.
Re: Why the DMD Backend?
Setting up LLVM infrastructure is only needed when you is a LDC developer. I think for ordinary users it's not their business.
Re: Why the DMD Backend?
On Sunday, 30 November 2014 at 02:07:16 UTC, ketmar via Digitalmars-d-learn wrote: On Sat, 29 Nov 2014 22:57:52 -0300 Ary Borenszweig via Digitalmars-d-learn digitalmars-d-learn@puremagic.com wrote: besides, i don't want to use anything llvm-related. Why not? let's say that there is some ideological reasons. but do you use anything gpl-related?
Re: Why the DMD Backend?
On Wed, 03 Dec 2014 01:48:53 + MachineCode via Digitalmars-d-learn digitalmars-d-learn@puremagic.com wrote: On Sunday, 30 November 2014 at 02:07:16 UTC, ketmar via Digitalmars-d-learn wrote: On Sat, 29 Nov 2014 22:57:52 -0300 Ary Borenszweig via Digitalmars-d-learn digitalmars-d-learn@puremagic.com wrote: besides, i don't want to use anything llvm-related. Why not? let's say that there is some ideological reasons. but do you use anything gpl-related? that is exactly the reason i'm against LLVM: it's license. i believe that compiler and compiler construction tools must be [L]GPLed or proprietary, but not MITed/BSDLed/SIMILARed. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Why the DMD Backend?
On Wed, Dec 3, 2014 at 8:03 AM, ketmar via Digitalmars-d-learn digitalmars-d-learn@puremagic.com wrote: that is exactly the reason i'm against LLVM: it's license. i believe that compiler and compiler construction tools must be [L]GPLed or proprietary, but not MITed/BSDLed/SIMILARed. Heh -- fine for whatever compiler tools *you* create, but if someone else creates it, and is willing to distribute it under a more liberal license, why should you find it unacceptable, I'm not sure! Isn't LGPL largely the same way versus the GPL? And I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that even the Linux kernel code (or most big popular L/GPL libs like Qt) has some BSD-licensed stuff inside it... BTW isn't Phobos Boost-licensed? And that's almost the same as BSD/MIT/ISC terms? -- Shriramana Sharma ஶ்ரீரமணஶர்மா श्रीरमणशर्मा
Re: Why the DMD Backend?
On Wed, 3 Dec 2014 08:14:53 +0530 Shriramana Sharma via Digitalmars-d-learn digitalmars-d-learn@puremagic.com wrote: Heh -- fine for whatever compiler tools *you* create, but if someone else creates it, and is willing to distribute it under a more liberal license, why should you find it unacceptable, I'm not sure! 'cause BSDL-likes allows proprietary forks. i don't trust proprietary vendors and i don't want 'em to create slightly incompatible closed fork which is better. they have either do all the work by themselves and release proprietary product from the start, or have no legal way to fork and close the work of the other people. i'm not against BSDL-likes per se, the only things i don't want with such licenses are compiler tools. so i'm not using LLVM-based compilers, i'm not interested in LLVM-based compilers, and such compilers are pretty much non-existant in my world. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Why the DMD Backend?
On Friday, 28 November 2014 at 19:59:40 UTC, Xinok wrote: Given that we have GDC with the GCC backend and LDC with the LLVM backend, what are the benefits of keeping the DMD compiler backend? It seems to me that GCC and LLVM are far more developed and better supported by their respective communities. They have superior optimizers and are better equipped for migrating D to new platforms. On the other hand, from what I gather, there's lots of work to be done on DMD on improving support for x64 Windows and ARM. It's a genuine question, which is why I posted this to D.learn. I don't follow development on the backend and overall I'm unfamiliar with compilers, so I'm not sure what the benefits are of the D community continuing to maintain it's own backend. I don't want to download neither gcc or llvm just to use D language. If so, I could refuse to install and move me away from the language. I tried to use others compilers which use gcc/llvm as backend where I had to do alot of workaround just to make it working on Windows that I just gave up.
Re: Why the DMD Backend?
MachineCode: I tried to use others compilers which use gcc/llvm as backend where I had to do alot of workaround just to make it working on Windows that I just gave up. I using ldc2 on Windows with no problems, and the installation is very easy, just download two archives and unpack them in the root. Add a path to your path file, and you are done. Bye, bearophile
Re: Why the DMD Backend?
On Sunday, 30 November 2014 at 22:15:44 UTC, bearophile wrote: MachineCode: I tried to use others compilers which use gcc/llvm as backend where I had to do alot of workaround just to make it working on Windows that I just gave up. I using ldc2 on Windows with no problems, and the installation is very easy, just download two archives and unpack them in the root. Add a path to your path file, and you are done. Bye, bearophile I wasn't speaking about the ldc(I haven't used it yet) but other compilers gcc/llvm-based that I've tried to use a while ago.
Re: Why the DMD Backend?
On Friday, 28 November 2014 at 19:59:40 UTC, Xinok wrote: Given that we have GDC with the GCC backend and LDC with the LLVM backend, what are the benefits of keeping the DMD compiler backend? It seems to me that GCC and LLVM are far more developed and better supported by their respective communities. They have superior optimizers and are better equipped for migrating D to new platforms. On the other hand, from what I gather, there's lots of work to be done on DMD on improving support for x64 Windows and ARM. The backend comes from the dmc and dmc++ compilers which Walter wrote, so he's always going to build against that, both because he knows it well and because he refuses to look at source for other compilers, for legal reasons. I don't know that there's much work left for Win64, certainly not on the backend. The dmc backend is for Intel only, ie i386 and x64. No support for ARM or any other arch and no plans to add them. It's a genuine question, which is why I posted this to D.learn. I don't follow development on the backend and overall I'm unfamiliar with compilers, so I'm not sure what the benefits are of the D community continuing to maintain it's own backend. What are the drawbacks? ldc and gdc have their own maintainers. I don't think it takes much work to maintain the dmc backend. On Friday, 28 November 2014 at 20:10:03 UTC, ketmar via Digitalmars-d-learn wrote: On Fri, 28 Nov 2014 19:59:39 + Xinok via Digitalmars-d-learn digitalmars-d-learn@puremagic.com wrote: Given that we have GDC with the GCC backend and LDC with the LLVM backend, what are the benefits of keeping the DMD compiler backend? build time for the whole DMD compiler with standard library, using G++: 100 seconds. yea, no kidding. gdc: i don't even want to think about that, way t long. ldc: not that long as gcc, but still much longer than DMD. I haven't timed it, but compiling ldc feels about 50-100% longer to me, which isn't too bad. Unless you're including the time to compile llvm, which is a different story. On Friday, 28 November 2014 at 20:14:07 UTC, LeakingAntonovPlane wrote: DDMD, bootstraping. LDC and GDC are not written in D. That's not the reason, both those projects plan on moving to the new D frontend also. dmd isn't written in D either: they just plan on translating the common dmd frontend from C++ to D, then using it across all three compilers. There is a D frontend written from scratch in D, SDC, which also uses llvm as the backend: https://github.com/deadalnix/SDC
Re: Why the DMD Backend?
On Sat, 29 Nov 2014 15:37:32 + Joakim via Digitalmars-d-learn digitalmars-d-learn@puremagic.com wrote: build time for the whole DMD compiler with standard library, using G++: 100 seconds. yea, no kidding. gdc: i don't even want to think about that, way t long. ldc: not that long as gcc, but still much longer than DMD. I haven't timed it, but compiling ldc feels about 50-100% longer to me, which isn't too bad. Unless you're including the time to compile llvm, which is a different story. at least 80%-100% longer. this is noticable. besides, i don't want to use anything llvm-related. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Why the DMD Backend?
On 11/29/14, 3:48 PM, ketmar via Digitalmars-d-learn wrote: On Sat, 29 Nov 2014 15:37:32 + Joakim via Digitalmars-d-learn digitalmars-d-learn@puremagic.com wrote: build time for the whole DMD compiler with standard library, using G++: 100 seconds. yea, no kidding. gdc: i don't even want to think about that, way t long. ldc: not that long as gcc, but still much longer than DMD. I haven't timed it, but compiling ldc feels about 50-100% longer to me, which isn't too bad. Unless you're including the time to compile llvm, which is a different story. at least 80%-100% longer. this is noticable. besides, i don't want to use anything llvm-related. Why not?
Re: Why the DMD Backend?
On Sat, 29 Nov 2014 22:57:52 -0300 Ary Borenszweig via Digitalmars-d-learn digitalmars-d-learn@puremagic.com wrote: besides, i don't want to use anything llvm-related. Why not? let's say that there is some ideological reasons. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Why the DMD Backend?
On Fri, 28 Nov 2014 19:59:39 + Xinok via Digitalmars-d-learn digitalmars-d-learn@puremagic.com wrote: Given that we have GDC with the GCC backend and LDC with the LLVM backend, what are the benefits of keeping the DMD compiler backend? build time for the whole DMD compiler with standard library, using G++: 100 seconds. yea, no kidding. gdc: i don't even want to think about that, way t long. ldc: not that long as gcc, but still much longer than DMD. besides, for get ready to use compiler with DMD i need only installed c++ compiler binary. for gdc i need the whole gcc source tree. for ldc i need installed llvm with it's headers. DMD is good for fast write-compile-test cycles. and in most cases it's codegen is satisfying enough. last, but not least: rdmd is faster than rgdc. ;-) signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Why the DMD Backend?
On Friday, 28 November 2014 at 19:59:40 UTC, Xinok wrote: Given that we have GDC with the GCC backend and LDC with the LLVM backend, what are the benefits of keeping the DMD compiler backend? It seems to me that GCC and LLVM are far more developed and better supported by their respective communities. They have superior optimizers and are better equipped for migrating D to new platforms. On the other hand, from what I gather, there's lots of work to be done on DMD on improving support for x64 Windows and ARM. It's a genuine question, which is why I posted this to D.learn. I don't follow development on the backend and overall I'm unfamiliar with compilers, so I'm not sure what the benefits are of the D community continuing to maintain it's own backend. DDMD, bootstraping. LDC and GDC are not written in D.
