Digital Mars - digitalmars.D - Andrei writes "The Case for D"

=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Anders_F_Bj=F6rklund?= <afb algonet.se> writes:

Walter Bright wrote:
 http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8stcr/the_case_for_d/


http://www.ddj.com/hpc-high-performance-computing/217801225 says:

"There are two major versions of the language -- D1 and D2.
This article focuses on D2 exclusively."

"The official D compiler is available for free off digitalmars.com on 
major desktop platforms (Windows, Mac, and Linux). Other implementations 
are underway, notably including an a .NET port and one using the LLVM 
infrastructure as backend."

"Last but definitely not least, two windowing libraries complete the 
language's offering quite spectacularly. The mature library DWT is a 
direct port of Java's SWT. A newer development is that the immensely 
popular Qt Software windowing library has recently released a D binding 
(in alpha as of this writing)."

In other words, so long and thanks for all the fish: GDC and wxD ?

--anders

Jun 16 2009

Tim Matthews <tim.matthews7 gmail.com> writes:

Anders F Bj�rklund wrote:

 
 "Last but definitely not least, two windowing libraries complete the 
 language's offering quite spectacularly. The mature library DWT is a 
 direct port of Java's SWT. A newer development is that the immensely 
 popular Qt Software windowing library has recently released a D binding 
 (in alpha as of this writing)."
 
 In other words, so long and thanks for all the fish: GDC and wxD ?
 
 --anders


About the gui toolkits: Never mind the fact that GTKD has been working 
stable for a long time unlike the QT port. Best to include both to keep 
wars at bay in my opinion like kde vs gnome.

Jun 16 2009

=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Anders_F_Bj=F6rklund?= <afb algonet.se> writes:

Tim Matthews wrote:
 "Last but definitely not least, two windowing libraries complete the 
 language's offering quite spectacularly. The mature library DWT is a 
 direct port of Java's SWT. A newer development is that the immensely 
 popular Qt Software windowing library has recently released a D 
 binding (in alpha as of this writing)."

 In other words, so long and thanks for all the fish: GDC and wxD ?


 About the gui toolkits: Never mind the fact that GTKD has been working 
 stable for a long time unlike the QT port. Best to include both to keep 
 wars at bay in my opinion like kde vs gnome.


Even though there are native versions of GTK+ for Windows and Mac OS X,
I think wxWidgets looks slightly better (it does use GTK+ on Unix/X11)

As for the news article, to make it interesting I suppose that it has to
mention the latest and greatest ? And DWT _is_ standard DMD GUI library.

--anders

Jun 16 2009

Robert Fraser <fraserofthenight gmail.com> writes:

Tim Matthews wrote:
 Anders F Bj�rklund wrote:
 
 "Last but definitely not least, two windowing libraries complete the 
 language's offering quite spectacularly. The mature library DWT is a 
 direct port of Java's SWT. A newer development is that the immensely 
 popular Qt Software windowing library has recently released a D 
 binding (in alpha as of this writing)."

 In other words, so long and thanks for all the fish: GDC and wxD ?

 --anders


 About the gui toolkits: Never mind the fact that GTKD has been working 
 stable for a long time unlike the QT port. Best to include both to keep 
 wars at bay in my opinion like kde vs gnome.


You might want to toss in DFL, too. It doesn't compile on the latest 
anything without (a little) work, but it's a stable GUI library with a 
graphical designer that was designed from the ground up with D in mind.

Jun 16 2009

Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:

Robert Fraser wrote:
 Tim Matthews wrote:
 Anders F Bj�rklund wrote:

 "Last but definitely not least, two windowing libraries complete the 
 language's offering quite spectacularly. The mature library DWT is a 
 direct port of Java's SWT. A newer development is that the immensely 
 popular Qt Software windowing library has recently released a D 
 binding (in alpha as of this writing)."

 In other words, so long and thanks for all the fish: GDC and wxD ?

 --anders


 About the gui toolkits: Never mind the fact that GTKD has been working 
 stable for a long time unlike the QT port. Best to include both to 
 keep wars at bay in my opinion like kde vs gnome.


 You might want to toss in DFL, too. It doesn't compile on the latest 
 anything without (a little) work, but it's a stable GUI library with a 
 graphical designer that was designed from the ground up with D in mind.


This is excellent information, you may want to post it to reddit too. 
Speaking of reddit, I noticed there are forty-something negative votes 
but only one negative comment. From direct experience (sigh) I know that 
people who think an article sucks usually are also very inclined to 
voice their opinion (even more so than people who think an article was 
good!) There must be a study in behavioral psych somewhere. So these 
votes seem to reflect a prior dislike to anything D and the immediate 
negative voting of anything related to it. I wonder how such this could 
be addressed.


Andrei

Jun 16 2009

Lutger <lutger.blijdestijn gmail.com> writes:

Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
...
 Speaking of reddit, I noticed there are forty-something negative votes
 but only one negative comment. From direct experience (sigh) I know that
 people who think an article sucks usually are also very inclined to
 voice their opinion (even more so than people who think an article was
 good!) There must be a study in behavioral psych somewhere. So these
 votes seem to reflect a prior dislike to anything D and the immediate
 negative voting of anything related to it. I wonder how such this could
 be addressed.
 
 
 Andrei.


Somebody at work put up a poster, I believe it was from Red Hat linux, with 
a famous Gandhi quote: "first they ignore you, then they fight you, then you 
win..."

Probably normal part of the process, I think it's best to avoid being 
defensive and continue business as usual :)

I *really* liked your article, it's nice to read such an well written piece  
with unreserved enthousiasm and passion about D.

Jun 16 2009

Sam Hu <samhudotsamhu gmail.com> writes:

Andrei Alexandrescu Wrote:

Robert Fraser wrote:
Tim Matthews wrote:
Anders F Bj�rklund wrote:

"Last but definitely not least, two windowing libraries complete the
language's offering quite spectacularly. The mature library DWT is a
direct port of Java's SWT. A newer development is that the immensely
popular Qt Software windowing library has recently released a D
binding (in alpha as of this writing)."

In other words, so long and thanks for all the fish: GDC and wxD ?

--anders

About the gui toolkits: Never mind the fact that GTKD has been working
stable for a long time unlike the QT port. Best to include both to
keep wars at bay in my opinion like kde vs gnome.

You might want to toss in DFL, too. It doesn't compile on the latest
anything without (a little) work, but it's a stable GUI library with a
graphical designer that was designed from the ground up with D in mind.

This is excellent information, you may want to post it to reddit too.
Speaking of reddit, I noticed there are forty-something negative votes
but only one negative comment. From direct experience (sigh) I know that
people who think an article sucks usually are also very inclined to
voice their opinion (even more so than people who think an article was
good!) There must be a study in behavioral psych somewhere. So these
votes seem to reflect a prior dislike to anything D and the immediate
negative voting of anything related to it. I wonder how such this could
be addressed.

Andrei

Last time I translated your post *RFC on range design for D2*

http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php?art_group=digitalmars.D.announce&article_id=12922

into Chinese but not getting your permission.Below is the link:

http://dlang.group.javaeye.com/group/topic/10615

I am so sorry for making such a big mistake.Just let me know if there is
anything I can do for this mistake.Thanks.

Btw.I( and other D fans in China) am planning to translate Bartosz's * Rice
free* series into Chinese also if the original links are reachable in my region
someday( they are not reachable right at this moment not knowing why).Can I
get your permission also?

Regards,
Sam

Jun 16 2009

Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:

Sam Hu wrote:
Andrei Alexandrescu Wrote:

Robert Fraser wrote:
Tim Matthews wrote:
Anders F Bj�rklund wrote:

"Last but definitely not least, two windowing libraries
complete the language's offering quite spectacularly. The
mature library DWT is a direct port of Java's SWT. A newer
development is that the immensely popular Qt Software
windowing library has recently released a D binding (in alpha
as of this writing)."

In other words, so long and thanks for all the fish: GDC and
wxD ?

--anders

working stable for a long time unlike the QT port. Best to
include both to keep wars at bay in my opinion like kde vs
gnome.

latest anything without (a little) work, but it's a stable GUI
library with a graphical designer that was designed from the
ground up with D in mind.

too. Speaking of reddit, I noticed there are forty-something
negative votes but only one negative comment. From direct
experience (sigh) I know that people who think an article sucks
usually are also very inclined to voice their opinion (even more so
than people who think an article was good!) There must be a study
in behavioral psych somewhere. So these votes seem to reflect a
prior dislike to anything D and the immediate negative voting of
anything related to it. I wonder how such this could be addressed.

Andrei

Last time I translated your post *RFC on range design for D2*

http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php?art_group=digitalmars.D.announce&article_id=12922

into Chinese but not getting your permission.Below is the link:

http://dlang.group.javaeye.com/group/topic/10615

I am so sorry for making such a big mistake.Just let me know if there
is anything I can do for this mistake.Thanks.

I hereby punish you to translate The Case For D as well :o).

No matter, really. That was just a temporary document that I deleted in
the meantime.

Btw.I( and other D fans in China) am planning to translate Bartosz's
* Rice free* series into Chinese also if the original links are
reachable in my region someday( they are not reachable right at this
moment not knowing why).Can I get your permission also?

Rice free? I don't think that title would be very successful in China.
You'd need to ask Bartosz for permission.

Shie shie,

Andrei

Jun 16 2009

Sam Hu <samhudotsamhu gmail.com> writes:

Andrei Alexandrescu Wrote:

Sam Hu wrote:
Andrei Alexandrescu Wrote:

Robert Fraser wrote:
Tim Matthews wrote:
Anders F Bj�rklund wrote:

"Last but definitely not least, two windowing libraries
complete the language's offering quite spectacularly. The
mature library DWT is a direct port of Java's SWT. A newer
development is that the immensely popular Qt Software
windowing library has recently released a D binding (in alpha
as of this writing)."

In other words, so long and thanks for all the fish: GDC and
wxD ?

--anders

working stable for a long time unlike the QT port. Best to
include both to keep wars at bay in my opinion like kde vs
gnome.

latest anything without (a little) work, but it's a stable GUI
library with a graphical designer that was designed from the
ground up with D in mind.

Andrei

Last time I translated your post *RFC on range design for D2*

http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php?art_group=digitalmars.D.announce&article_id=12922

into Chinese but not getting your permission.Below is the link:

http://dlang.group.javaeye.com/group/topic/10615

I am so sorry for making such a big mistake.Just let me know if there
is anything I can do for this mistake.Thanks.

I hereby punish you to translate The Case For D as well :o).

No matter, really. That was just a temporary document that I deleted in
the meantime.

Btw.I( and other D fans in China) am planning to translate Bartosz's
* Rice free* series into Chinese also if the original links are
reachable in my region someday( they are not reachable right at this
moment not knowing why).Can I get your permission also?

Rice free? I don't think that title would be very successful in China.
You'd need to ask Bartosz for permission.

Shie shie,

Andrei

Thank you so much Andrei! We'll try to translate the Case for D into Chinese
with pleasure!

Thanks again.

Regards,
Sam

Jun 16 2009

JMNorris <nospam nospam.com> writes:

Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote in news:h18i1p
$16l9$1 digitalmars.com:

 So these 
 votes seem to reflect a prior dislike to anything D and the immediate 
 negative voting of anything related to it. I wonder how such this could 
 be addressed.


Two killer apps written in D plus one article in a medical journal.  One of 
the killer apps should commercial so that people can see money being made 
using D.  The other should be open source so that the contributers are 
forced to learn D.  And the medical journal article?  It needs to show that 
contributing to this open source app in D cures erectile disfunction.

-- JMNorris

Jun 17 2009

"Robert Jacques" <sandford jhu.edu> writes:

On Tue, 16 Jun 2009 05:00:46 -0400, Anders F Bj�rklund <afb algonet.se>  
wrote:

 Walter Bright wrote:
 http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8stcr/the_case_for_d/


 http://www.ddj.com/hpc-high-performance-computing/217801225 says:

 "There are two major versions of the language -- D1 and D2.
 This article focuses on D2 exclusively."

 "The official D compiler is available for free off digitalmars.com on  
 major desktop platforms (Windows, Mac, and Linux). Other implementations  
 are underway, notably including an a .NET port and one using the LLVM  
 infrastructure as backend."

 "Last but definitely not least, two windowing libraries complete the  
 language's offering quite spectacularly. The mature library DWT is a  
 direct port of Java's SWT. A newer development is that the immensely  
 popular Qt Software windowing library has recently released a D binding  
 (in alpha as of this writing)."

 In other words, so long and thanks for all the fish: GDC and wxD ?

 --anders


Not to mention DFL. Also, DWT requires Tango and doesn't support phobos,  
so it doesn't "complete the language's offering quite spectacularly".

Jun 16 2009

=?ISO-8859-15?Q?Anders_F_Bj=F6rklund?= <afb algonet.se> writes:

Robert Jacques wrote:

 Not to mention DFL. Also, DWT requires Tango and doesn't support phobos, 
 so it doesn't "complete the language's offering quite spectacularly".


I think DFL has also been around for some time, so not news either ?
As I recall DFL wasn't very portable, so I mostly looked at MinWin...

Wiki4D had the list, http://prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?GuiLibraries
By the way QtD also requires Tango, while "D2 support is on its way".

--anders

Jun 16 2009

Moritz Warning <moritzwarning web.de> writes:

On Tue, 16 Jun 2009 11:42:31 -0500, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 Robert Fraser wrote:
 Tim Matthews wrote:
 Anders F Björklund wrote:


 "Last but definitely not least, two windowing libraries complete the
 language's offering quite spectacularly. The mature library DWT is a
 direct port of Java's SWT. A newer development is that the immensely
 popular Qt Software windowing library has recently released a D
 binding (in alpha as of this writing)."

 In other words, so long and thanks for all the fish: GDC and wxD ?

 --anders


 About the gui toolkits: Never mind the fact that GTKD has been working
 stable for a long time unlike the QT port. Best to include both to
 keep wars at bay in my opinion like kde vs gnome.


 You might want to toss in DFL, too. It doesn't compile on the latest
 anything without (a little) work, but it's a stable GUI library with a
 graphical designer that was designed from the ground up with D in mind.


 This is excellent information, you may want to post it to reddit too.
 Speaking of reddit, I noticed there are forty-something negative votes
 but only one negative comment. From direct experience (sigh) I know that
 people who think an article sucks usually are also very inclined to
 voice their opinion (even more so than people who think an article was
 good!) There must be a study in behavioral psych somewhere. So these
 votes seem to reflect a prior dislike to anything D and the immediate
 negative voting of anything related to it. I wonder how such this could
 be addressed.
 
 
 Andrei


There is always a portion of down votes for every headline. That amount 
is normal.
Down voting often comes from "I don't use that language and I'am 
satisfied", gut feeling and the age of the last coffee.
I would say it's the same headwind for most language related topics on 
reddit.

Anyway, great article! Thanks.

Jun 16 2009

grauzone <none example.net> writes:

Walter Bright wrote:
 http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8stcr/the_case_for_d/


Nice article. Here some random bitching.

 If you are patient, you'll find out that D has constructors and 



Not entirely true. Andrei forgot that destructors, in many situations, 
are not deterministic at all, because the garbage collector calls the 
destructor when an object is finalized. Another easily fixable mistake 
that makes life so hard.

 Other implementations are underway, notably including an a .NET port 



Just that LDC (why not mention it directly?) is starting to become more 
stable than DMD, while the .NET port is in an early alpha stage at best.

 In fact, D can link and call C functions directly with no intervening 



Sure, but that makes the uninformed reader think he can use header files 
directly. He will be disappointed when he finds out he has to translate 
headers manually. (AFAIK there's no tool yet which does this 
automatically with no user intervention required.)

 This low latency means you can use D as a heck of an interpreter (the 



Now isn't that quite implementation specific. Maybe you should also 
mention that dmd is not only fast, but also contains lots of bugs that 
become issues in real life. So much for the implementation of the 
reference compiler. (And sure, no doubt any language is easier to parse 
and compile than C++. You could claim dmd's fastness is only a special 
thing when compared to C++.)

 The basic idea is that D allows you to subtype as you need via alias 



Oh, so you decided to keep it.

 Variable-length parameter lists are also allowed.


Just not variable-length alias parameter lists or variable-length lists 
of constants, d'oh.

 What takes things into space is the ability to convert strings into 



I think the reader won't understand at all what's going on. Why not 
provide a simple example? int y = 1; int x = mixin("2+y");

 A better design has been blueprinted and the implementation is "on 



(That was about reflection.) I think the readers of the newsgroup, where 
future directions of D 2.0 are regularly discussed, would like to know 
more about this.

 In D, the Boolean compile-time expression is(typeof(expr)) yields 


aborting compilation).

Surprised to find this anti-feature mentioned in an introductory article 
on D.

Jun 16 2009

bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:

grauzone:
 Just that LDC (why not mention it directly?) is starting to become more 
 stable than DMD, while the .NET port is in an early alpha stage at best.


I agree with you, mentioning LDC name there is better. This part of the article
is bad.
And LDC is getting quite stable, I'm using it on Linux with good results.
I think the main missing parts of LDC (but please correct me if I am wrong) is
that is lacks still: exception on Windows, built-in profiler, built-in code
coverage. Once those three things are in place then LDC can replace DMD in most
situations (I don't know much about the code coverage in LDC, I'll ask on IRC).


 Now isn't that quite implementation specific. Maybe you should also 
 mention that dmd is not only fast, but also contains lots of bugs that 
 become issues in real life.


I think the author of the article is trying to show only how D2 can be good in
theory, its good sides, and not its "current" real-world faults. I don't agree
with this choice, I prefer my texts to be more realistic and to list
downsides/faults too. I try to be more balanced.

Bye,
bearophile

Jun 16 2009

Frits van Bommel <fvbommel REMwOVExCAPSs.nl> writes:

bearophile wrote:
 grauzone:
 Just that LDC (why not mention it directly?) is starting to become more 
 stable than DMD, while the .NET port is in an early alpha stage at best.


 I agree with you, mentioning LDC name there is better. This part of the
article is bad.
 And LDC is getting quite stable, I'm using it on Linux with good results.
 I think the main missing parts of LDC (but please correct me if I am wrong) is
that is lacks still: exception on Windows, built-in profiler, built-in code
coverage. Once those three things are in place then LDC can replace DMD in most
situations (I don't know much about the code coverage in LDC, I'll ask on IRC).


In the context of the article it's missing another pretty major feature: actual 
support for pretty much anything new in D2.0...

Jun 16 2009

grauzone <none example.net> writes:

bearophile wrote:
 grauzone:
 Just that LDC (why not mention it directly?) is starting to become more 
 stable than DMD, while the .NET port is in an early alpha stage at best.


 I think the author has not cited LDC as "nearly finished" because it's mostly
a D1 compiler still (and can't be used on Windows).


Makes sense. Why is Andrei building his book upon an unfinished 
language, anyway...

Jun 16 2009

"Lars T. Kyllingstad" <public kyllingen.NOSPAMnet> writes:

grauzone wrote:
  > Other implementations are underway, notably including an a .NET port 
 and one using the LLVM infrastructure as backend.
 
 Just that LDC (why not mention it directly?) is starting to become more 
 stable than DMD, while the .NET port is in an early alpha stage at best.


A quote from the article's introduction:
     "This article focuses on D2 exclusively."

Next, a quote from the LDC home page:
     "D2 support is currently experimental and may not compile
      or work at all!"

That's probably what he meant by "underway".

-Lars

Jun 16 2009

Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:

MIURA Masahiro wrote:
 Walter Bright wrote:
 http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8stcr/the_case_for_d/


 A few D fans in Japan are considering translating this article.
 Is it OK to translate and publish it?
 Whom should we ask permission of?


Konnichiwa! I hereby grant you permission to translate the article.
Please let me know when you're done, I'll link to the translation.

Andrei

Jun 16 2009

Ary Borenszweig <ary esperanto.org.ar> writes:

Walter Bright escribi�:
 http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8stcr/the_case_for_d/


Great article!

I like how you mention a lot of D features and also a lot of tools built 
for it.

Just a few questions:

1. Will "alias ... this" be used to do "opCast"? It seems like it's 
working like that.
2. Will two "alias ... this" with the same type be disallowed?
3. What happens if you have "alias A this" and "alias B this" and A 
extends B, and you assign the instance to something of type B? Both A 
and B match.

(oh, I just read the page about "alias this" (I didn't know it was 
already impelemented) and it says you can only have one "alias this"... 
why? I think that limitation removes it's usefulness)

4. I tried to compile the sort example but it doesn't work. I'm sure 
it'll work some day in the future, but I'm not sure it's a good idea to 
not mention "this still doesn't work", because people might download the 
compiler, try it and say "the lied!" (something like that happened to me 
when I tried the example).

Jun 16 2009

Leandro Lucarella <llucax gmail.com> writes:

Walter Bright, el 16 de junio a las 01:12 me escribiste:
 http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8stcr/the_case_for_d/


Nice article. A few comments:

* If the article talks just about D2, I think it should be consistent. If
  it says that LDC is not finished because it doesn't support, I think it
  should say that as well for Decent, which has no D2 support. I don't
  know the state of the other tools mentioned, but I think that could
  confuse people. Same for Tango, in D2, when Tango will be finally
  ported, it will not compete anymore as an "standard library", they will
  be able to run side-by-side without problems. The problem with D1 is
  they compete for being the *runtime library*, which can be one and only
  one.

* I think alowing alias of complete expressions would be really nice. What
  does this has to do with the article? Because of this example:

	foreach (f; take(50, recurrence!("a[n-1] + a[n-2]")(0, 1)))
  		writeln(f);

  The example is just beautiful, but I think is a little cryptic, not very
  nice for code review (the Perl-style write-once, never read it again =).

  If you could do something like:

	alias recurrence!("a[n-1] + a[n-2]")(0, 1) fibonacci;
	foreach (f; take(50, fibonacci))
  		writeln(f);

  Ok, that's not a oneliner anymore, but I think is far more readable
  (which, maybe, is not what you want for showing the power of the
  language/stdlib using a oneliner but is what you want for long-term
  real-life development =).


-- 
Leandro Lucarella (luca) | Blog colectivo: http://www.mazziblog.com.ar/blog/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
GPG Key: 5F5A8D05 (F8CD F9A7 BF00 5431 4145  104C 949E BFB6 5F5A 8D05)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jun 16 2009

Brad Roberts <braddr bellevue.puremagic.com> writes:

On Tue, 16 Jun 2009, BCS wrote:

 Reply to Benjamin,
 
 Reply to Walter,
 
 Someone in there started a gripe about installers (they doesn't want
 to have to edit their path). Would you have any objections to (in
 addition to the current .zip distro) having officially sanctioned
 .rpm/.deb/.msi distros? Once the infrastructure is in place to build
 any of them, the rest should be easy.
 


 p.s. I'm thinking of a setup where someone other than Walter maintains them.


From a long term maintainability standpoint, if someone wants to produce 
an installer that's likely to have longevity, it should operate on the 
underlying .zip file.  Take the zip and open it, make whatever (hopefully 
damned few) changes necessary, and kick the os as needed.

Having to re-build the installer for every release is what has caused 
essentially every installer attempt to die a horrible lingering death.

My 2 cents,
Brad

Jun 16 2009

=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Anders_F_Bj=F6rklund?= <afb algonet.se> writes:

Brad Roberts wrote:

 p.s. I'm thinking of a setup where someone other than Walter maintains them.


 From a long term maintainability standpoint, if someone wants to produce 
 an installer that's likely to have longevity, it should operate on the 
 underlying .zip file.  Take the zip and open it, make whatever (hopefully 
 damned few) changes necessary, and kick the os as needed.


I never got around to scripting the file manifest, but beyond diffing
the list of files that was pretty much the installer solution suggested.

The script is still available, if wanted...
http://www.algonet.se/~afb/d/dmd-setup.html

The main advantage over the raw .zip file was that it saved the sc.ini
and that it automatically set up the PATH, and also upgrades/uninstall.

 Having to re-build the installer for every release is what has caused 
 essentially every installer attempt to die a horrible lingering death.


There was also the slight problem of not being able to share the result.

The installers for GDC seems to have survived the boredom of rebuilding.

--anders

Jun 16 2009

Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:

BCS wrote:
 Reply to Benjamin,
 
 Reply to Walter,

 Someone in there started a gripe about installers (they doesn't want
 to have to edit their path). Would you have any objections to (in
 addition to the current .zip distro) having officially sanctioned
 .rpm/.deb/.msi distros? Once the infrastructure is in place to build
 any of them, the rest should be easy.


 p.s. I'm thinking of a setup where someone other than Walter maintains 
 them.


I think that's a terrific idea. It's unlikely that Walter would dislike 
that, but let's hear from him.

People complaining about the lack of a modern simple installer do have a 
point. An installer is like the first impression, and therefore it's 
more important than most long-time users would think.

Cristi Vlasceanu has contributed a .deb packager for D, see 
http://www.dsource.org/projects/phobos/browser/trunk/rpmsrc. I am more 
than a bit disappointed that to this day Walter has failed to integrate 
that work in his build process. I am disappointed exactly because I know 
how important the installer is, something that Walter seems to be 
blindsided to (like most of us he empathizes with needs that he has too, 
but he seldom needs to install the compiler and knows exactly what to 
do, and subliminally assumes anyone would be as content with the 
installation process).

So, it would be beyond great if there was a troika of Windows, Linux, 
and Mac installers. It could actually be entirely automated - a cron job 
could poll ftp.digitalmars.com for new versions and create the installer 
as soon as a new version is posted there.


Andrei

Jun 16 2009

Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:

BCS wrote:
 Someone in there started a gripe about installers (they doesn't want to 
 have to edit their path). Would you have any objections to (in addition 
 to the current .zip distro) having officially sanctioned .rpm/.deb/.msi 
 distros? Once the infrastructure is in place to build any of them, the 
 rest should be easy.


There is one for Ubuntu, but I'm having a bit of trouble making it work 
right.

But I actually agree that having a one-click install would help D along.

Jun 16 2009

BCS <none anon.com> writes:

Hello Walter,

 BCS wrote:
 
 Someone in there started a gripe about installers (they doesn't want
 to have to edit their path). Would you have any objections to (in
 addition to the current .zip distro) having officially sanctioned
 .rpm/.deb/.msi distros? Once the infrastructure is in place to build
 any of them, the rest should be easy.
 


 work right.


<joke>IMHO: "That's Not Your Job!!"</joke> 

Check it into dsource and ask for people to adopt it.

Jun 16 2009

Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:

Walter Bright wrote:
 BCS wrote:
 Hello Walter,
 There is one for Ubuntu, but I'm having a bit of trouble making it
 work right.


 <joke>IMHO: "That's Not Your Job!!"</joke>
 Check it into dsource and ask for people to adopt it. 


 
 I didn't think of that. Great idea!


Again: http://www.dsource.org/projects/phobos/browser/trunk/rpmsrc

I think BCS' idea is brilliant, particularly in wake of the 
recently-manifested desire of the community to help push D ahead. An 
installer would be a highly visible and highly useful contribution.


Andrei

Jun 16 2009