• Frank Rundell <frru btinternet.com> Jun 20 2009
• Lutger <lutger.blijdestijn gmail.com> Jun 20 2009
• Lutger <lutger.blijdestijn gmail.com> Jun 20 2009
• grauzone <none example.net> Jun 20 2009
• Lutger <lutger.blijdestijn gmail.com> Jun 20 2009
• grauzone <none example.net> Jun 20 2009
• Robert Fraser <fraserofthenight gmail.com> Jun 20 2009
• Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> Jun 20 2009
• Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> Jun 20 2009
• Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> Jun 21 2009
• Robert Fraser <fraserofthenight gmail.com> Jun 21 2009
• Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> Jun 21 2009
• Robert Fraser <fraserofthenight gmail.com> Jun 21 2009
• Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> Jun 21 2009
• robert fraser <fraserofthenight gmail.com> Jun 21 2009
• Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> Jun 21 2009
• BCS <none anon.com> Jun 21 2009
• Lutger <lutger.blijdestijn gmail.com> Jun 20 2009
• Steve Teale <steve.teale britseyeview.com> Jun 21 2009
• =?UTF-8?B?IkrDqXLDtG1lIE0uIEJlcmdlciI=?= <jeberger free.fr> Jun 21 2009
• dsimcha <dsimcha yahoo.com> Jun 20 2009
• Jarrett Billingsley <jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> Jun 20 2009
• Jarrett Billingsley <jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> Jun 20 2009

Frank Rundell <frru btinternet.com> writes:

superdan Wrote:

 Steve Teale Wrote:
 
 Can this group come up with a proper, sober (OK, I'm not)


 den pretty please explain why anyone should give a flyin' fuck fer yer drunken
rant.



And your response is why D is never going to be more than a beta compiler and
interesting discussion piece between a small number of programmers.

If it wants to compete with the 'big boys' it needs an IDE, a GUI library that
can compile and work, a debugger that understands D, a proper linker, packaged
releases for linux, an installer for Windows, etc.

D2 is in danger of becoming a camel i.e. a horse designed by a committee...

Frank.

Lutger <lutger.blijdestijn gmail.com> writes:

Frank Rundell wrote:

 superdan Wrote:
 
 Steve Teale Wrote:
 
 Can this group come up with a proper, sober (OK, I'm not)


 den pretty please explain why anyone should give a flyin' fuck fer yer
 drunken rant.


 
 And your response is why D is never going to be more than a beta compiler
 and interesting discussion piece between a small number of programmers.
 
 If it wants to compete with the 'big boys' it needs an IDE, a GUI library
 that can compile and work, a debugger that understands D, a proper linker,
 packaged releases for linux, an installer for Windows, etc.
 
 D2 is in danger of becoming a camel i.e. a horse designed by a
 committee...
 
 Frank.


?

As far as I know, the 'committee' consists of a gang of three, with Walter 
firmly at the driving seat, all working very hard to flesh out a language, 
create an innovative library and quality compiler. All the tools and 
libraries you mention are being created. In addition there's also LDC which 
is shaping up nicely. Not to say everything is already here, but that is a 
question of time and manpower, not direction.

What's up with all the negativity lately? Impatience?

Lutger <lutger.blijdestijn gmail.com> writes:

Lutger wrote:

...
 What's up with all the negativity lately? Impatience?


Or is everybody drunk, am I missing a party?

grauzone <none example.net> writes:

 D2 is in danger of becoming a camel i.e. a horse designed by a
 committee...

 Frank.


 ?
 
 As far as I know, the 'committee' consists of a gang of three, with Walter 
 firmly at the driving seat, all working very hard to flesh out a language, 
 create an innovative library and quality compiler. All the tools and 
 libraries you mention are being created. In addition there's also LDC which 
 is shaping up nicely. Not to say everything is already here, but that is a 
 question of time and manpower, not direction.
 
 What's up with all the negativity lately? Impatience?


Some people think D2 tries too much, and neglects the really important 
things at the same time. For example, D2 tries to solve the concurrency 
issue (which is a hot topic which makes D look good at sites like 
stackoverflow), while still relying on a 20 years old linker written in 
assembler.

Lutger <lutger.blijdestijn gmail.com> writes:

grauzone wrote:

 D2 is in danger of becoming a camel i.e. a horse designed by a
 committee...

 Frank.


 ?
 
 As far as I know, the 'committee' consists of a gang of three, with
 Walter firmly at the driving seat, all working very hard to flesh out a
 language, create an innovative library and quality compiler. All the
 tools and libraries you mention are being created. In addition there's
 also LDC which is shaping up nicely. Not to say everything is already
 here, but that is a question of time and manpower, not direction.
 
 What's up with all the negativity lately? Impatience?


 Some people think D2 tries too much, and neglects the really important
 things at the same time. For example, D2 tries to solve the concurrency
 issue (which is a hot topic which makes D look good at sites like
 stackoverflow), while still relying on a 20 years old linker written in
 assembler.


So the better direction according to some is to stagnate language design for 
D2 so Walter Bright can reinvent the linker? So that years later when asked 
why D didn't do more for concurrency when it was needed, you'd have to 
reply: "well there wasn't any time to deal with such trivial issues, the 
language designer had to work on the toolchain."

grauzone <none example.net> writes:

 So the better direction according to some is to stagnate language design for 
 D2 so Walter Bright can reinvent the linker? So that years later when asked 


No, but to use a real linker instead of that piece of crap.

 why D didn't do more for concurrency when it was needed, you'd have to 
 reply: "well there wasn't any time to deal with such trivial issues, the 
 language designer had to work on the toolchain."


Eh, you seriously think D2 would still be in use at that time? We will 
have D325858 which broke backwards compatibility for the 325858th time. 
This issue (multithreading) seriously could wait a bit longer. The most 
hilarious thing is that multithreading support in Phobos was incredibly 
buggy, and even today, basic multithreading primitives like condition 
variables are lacking from Phobos. Oh yeah, we got builtin mutexes so 
that we can say "D supports multithreading on the language level". Funny.

Robert Fraser <fraserofthenight gmail.com> writes:

grauzone wrote:
 So the better direction according to some is to stagnate language 
 design for D2 so Walter Bright can reinvent the linker? So that years 
 later when asked 


 No, but to use a real linker instead of that piece of crap.


With objconv, it might be possible to use a different linker on Windows. 
I'm considering doing so since Optlink won't work with the debug build 
of one of my libraries (it's 22MB), and it doesn't seem to discard any 
unreferenced library symbols, so the release build of my code is ~9.5MB, 
while it should be ~4.

Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:

Robert Fraser wrote:
 I'm considering doing so since Optlink won't work with the debug build 
 of one of my libraries (it's 22MB),


Is this reported in bugzilla?

 and it doesn't seem to discard any 
 unreferenced library symbols, so the release build of my code is ~9.5MB, 
 while it should be ~4.


Optlink does not discard unreference symbols, it just doesn't pull them 
in from the library. If it did always pull in everything from the 
library, then the minimum D executable size will be the size of Phobos.

Since that isn't happening, something else is happening with your code. 
I bet that those unreferenced symbols *are* being referenced. You can 
determine this by using the librarian to remove those 'unreferenced' 
symbols from Phobos, and then link, and see if there are any unresolved 
symbol error messages.

Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:

Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
 On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 11:35 PM, Walter
 Bright<newshound1 digitalmars.com> wrote:
 Robert Fraser wrote:
 I'm considering doing so since Optlink won't work with the debug build of
 one of my libraries (it's 22MB),




 http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=424
 
 He's not the only one.  Ask me, Tom S., eldar..


1. Robert doesn't say if that is the issue or not.

2. The last comment in the bug report is a request for a reproducible 
test case. I need one.

Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:

Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
 On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 1:27 AM, Walter
 Bright<newshound1 digitalmars.com> wrote:
 2. The last comment in the bug report is a request for a reproducible test
 case. I need one.


 I've just posted one.


Thank you.

Robert Fraser <fraserofthenight gmail.com> writes:

Walter Bright wrote:
 Optlink does not discard unreference symbols, it just doesn't pull them 
 in from the library. If it did always pull in everything from the 
 library, then the minimum D executable size will be the size of Phobos.
 
 Since that isn't happening, something else is happening with your code. 
 I bet that those unreferenced symbols *are* being referenced. You can 
 determine this by using the librarian to remove those 'unreferenced' 
 symbols from Phobos, and then link, and see if there are any unresolved 
 symbol error messages.


Hmmm... well, I built a 3rd-party library (Platinum UPnP + Neptune) into 
two static libraries (with VS). I then wrote a C wrapper function around 
one, just to test out the functionality I needed (a fraction of what was 
available). Originally, I wanted to statically link it with my D project 
so I ran objconv on the libs (COFF -> OMF). I created a test D app that 
was basically just:

extern(C) int cMain();
int main(char[][] args) { return cMain(); }

... And linked it to the OMF version of the library. Worked fine, but 
the result was ~12MB, which is about 200k larger than the two libraries. 
I'm now using VC++ to build it into a DLL that exposes the function. 
802kb for a debug DLL, 280k for a release.

The same thing is happening with my other library (ffmpeg -- libavcodec, 
libavformat, libavutil and swscale), which I built as static libraries 
with MinGW gcc and converted again with objconv. In this case, I'm too 
lazy to create a DLL to wrap only the functions I want, though I may end 
up doing just that once my project gets closer to usable.

Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:

Robert Fraser wrote:
 Hmmm... well, I built a 3rd-party library (Platinum UPnP + Neptune) into 
 two static libraries (with VS). I then wrote a C wrapper function around 
 one, just to test out the functionality I needed (a fraction of what was 
 available). Originally, I wanted to statically link it with my D project 
 so I ran objconv on the libs (COFF -> OMF). I created a test D app that 
 was basically just:
 
 extern(C) int cMain();
 int main(char[][] args) { return cMain(); }
 
 ... And linked it to the OMF version of the library. Worked fine, but 
 the result was ~12MB, which is about 200k larger than the two libraries. 
 I'm now using VC++ to build it into a DLL that exposes the function. 
 802kb for a debug DLL, 280k for a release.
 
 The same thing is happening with my other library (ffmpeg -- libavcodec, 
 libavformat, libavutil and swscale), which I built as static libraries 
 with MinGW gcc and converted again with objconv. In this case, I'm too 
 lazy to create a DLL to wrap only the functions I want, though I may end 
 up doing just that once my project gets closer to usable.


It may be a problem with objconv where it puts everything into one obj file.

Robert Fraser <fraserofthenight gmail.com> writes:

Walter Bright wrote:
 Robert Fraser wrote:
 Hmmm... well, I built a 3rd-party library (Platinum UPnP + Neptune) 
 into two static libraries (with VS). I then wrote a C wrapper function 
 around one, just to test out the functionality I needed (a fraction of 
 what was available). Originally, I wanted to statically link it with 
 my D project so I ran objconv on the libs (COFF -> OMF). I created a 
 test D app that was basically just:

 extern(C) int cMain();
 int main(char[][] args) { return cMain(); }

 ... And linked it to the OMF version of the library. Worked fine, but 
 the result was ~12MB, which is about 200k larger than the two 
 libraries. I'm now using VC++ to build it into a DLL that exposes the 
 function. 802kb for a debug DLL, 280k for a release.

 The same thing is happening with my other library (ffmpeg -- 
 libavcodec, libavformat, libavutil and swscale), which I built as 
 static libraries with MinGW gcc and converted again with objconv. In 
 this case, I'm too lazy to create a DLL to wrap only the functions I 
 want, though I may end up doing just that once my project gets closer 
 to usable.


 It may be a problem with objconv where it puts everything into one obj 
 file.


Update on this -- I built it as a DLL in VS, exposing only the functions 
I need. The DLL is just under 5MB in release mode, and it took my main 
program down to 823k.

Your explanation sounds likely, however it seems VS is discriminating on 
the per-symbol level...? I'm going to need to make sure runtime CPU 
detection was still built in, though; VS may have been too smart for its 
own good.

Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:

Robert Fraser wrote:
 Your explanation sounds likely, however it seems VS is discriminating on 
 the per-symbol level...?


Let's say the C++ source file looks like:

----------------------------
int foo() { ... }
int bar() { ... }
----------------------------

it is compiled and put into a library. Your program references foo(). 
Pulling in the object module from the library that contains foo() also 
pulls in bar(), because bar() is in the same object module. If bar() 
references a bunch of other stuff, that gets pulled in, too.

VS may contain some scheme to split a source file into multiple object 
modules which prevents this.

Note that dmd will split a single source file into multiple object 
modules when you compile with -lib.

robert fraser <fraserofthenight gmail.com> writes:

Walter Bright Wrote:

 Robert Fraser wrote:
 Your explanation sounds likely, however it seems VS is discriminating on 
 the per-symbol level...?


 Let's say the C++ source file looks like:
 
 ----------------------------
 int foo() { ... }
 int bar() { ... }
 ----------------------------
 
 it is compiled and put into a library. Your program references foo(). 
 Pulling in the object module from the library that contains foo() also 
 pulls in bar(), because bar() is in the same object module. If bar() 
 references a bunch of other stuff, that gets pulled in, too.
 
 VS may contain some scheme to split a source file into multiple object 
 modules which prevents this.
 
 Note that dmd will split a single source file into multiple object 
 modules when you compile with -lib.


Ah, thanks for the explanation. I didn't understand it pulled in whole object
files at once, though given that libraries are just archives of object files, I
should have assumed.

Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:

robert fraser wrote:
 Ah, thanks for the explanation. I didn't understand it pulled in
 whole object files at once, though given that libraries are just
 archives of object files, I should have assumed.


The linker can eliminate some unused COMDATs from the object file, but 
in general this isn't very effective because most of the semantic 
information is gone.

That's what makes the -lib switch so nifty, it does the splitting up 
with full knowledge of the semantic info, so it does a proper job of it.

BCS <none anon.com> writes:

Hello Robert,

 The same thing is happening with my other library (ffmpeg --
 libavcodec, libavformat, libavutil and swscale), which I built as
 static libraries with MinGW gcc and converted again with objconv. In
 this case, I'm too lazy to create a DLL to wrap only the functions I
 want, though I may end up doing just that once my project gets closer
 to usable.
 


what is needed is a reference graph tool and .exe inspector tool.

Lutger <lutger.blijdestijn gmail.com> writes:

grauzone wrote:

 So the better direction according to some is to stagnate language design
 for D2 so Walter Bright can reinvent the linker? So that years later when
 asked


 No, but to use a real linker instead of that piece of crap.


And this real linker is going to magically appear from nowhere? 

 why D didn't do more for concurrency when it was needed, you'd have to
 reply: "well there wasn't any time to deal with such trivial issues, the
 language designer had to work on the toolchain."


 Eh, you seriously think D2 would still be in use at that time? We will
 have D325858 which broke backwards compatibility for the 325858th time.
 This issue (multithreading) seriously could wait a bit longer. The most
 hilarious thing is that multithreading support in Phobos was incredibly
 buggy, and even today, basic multithreading primitives like condition
 variables are lacking from Phobos. Oh yeah, we got builtin mutexes so
 that we can say "D supports multithreading on the language level". Funny.


D1 is stable and actively supported. Tango has the functionality. LDC has 
the linker and work is being done that other OS. Now, what is problem? 
Really I don't understand.

But ok, if you don't think of multithreading to be a big deal and find 
existing solutions perfectly adequate, generic programming a niche 
functionality and functional programming overrated, then the whole D2 deal 
certainly looks like a wasted effort better spend on writing a linker. 

Steve Teale <steve.teale britseyeview.com> writes:

 What's up with all the negativity lately? Impatience?


 Some people think D2 tries too much, and neglects the really important
 things at the same time. For example, D2 tries to solve the concurrency
 issue (which is a hot topic which makes D look good at sites like
 stackoverflow), while still relying on a 20 years old linker written in
 assembler.


 So the better direction according to some is to stagnate language design for 
 D2 so Walter Bright can reinvent the linker? So that years later when asked 
 why D didn't do more for concurrency when it was needed, you'd have to 
 reply: "well there wasn't any time to deal with such trivial issues, the 
 language designer had to work on the toolchain."
 


can you do a new linker? I can't. There must be someone out there who can -
please, please.

=?UTF-8?B?IkrDqXLDtG1lIE0uIEJlcmdlciI=?= <jeberger free.fr> writes:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Steve Teale wrote:
 What's up with all the negativity lately? Impatience?








 things at the same time. For example, D2 tries to solve the concurren=






 issue (which is a hot topic which makes D look good at sites like
 stackoverflow), while still relying on a 20 years old linker written =






 assembler.






 D2 so Walter Bright can reinvent the linker? So that years later when =




 why D didn't do more for concurrency when it was needed, you'd have to=




 reply: "well there wasn't any time to deal with such trivial issues, t=




 language designer had to work on the toolchain."


 can you do a new linker? I can't. There must be someone out there who c=


=20
=20



		Jerome
--=20
mailto:jeberger free.fr
http://jeberger.free.fr
Jabber: jeberger jabber.fr

dsimcha <dsimcha yahoo.com> writes:

== Quote from grauzone (none example.net)'s article
 D2 is in danger of becoming a camel i.e. a horse designed by a
 committee...

 Frank.


 ?

 As far as I know, the 'committee' consists of a gang of three, with Walter
 firmly at the driving seat, all working very hard to flesh out a language,
 create an innovative library and quality compiler. All the tools and
 libraries you mention are being created. In addition there's also LDC which
 is shaping up nicely. Not to say everything is already here, but that is a
 question of time and manpower, not direction.

 What's up with all the negativity lately? Impatience?


 things at the same time. For example, D2 tries to solve the concurrency
 issue (which is a hot topic which makes D look good at sites like
 stackoverflow), while still relying on a 20 years old linker written in
 assembler.


But linkers are an implementation detail, threading is really central to what
you'd call "the language".  To me the most important thing for Walter is to get
a
stable, well-thought out spec and a "good enough" reference/proof of concept
implementation of that spec out the door.  This means implementing all features
that are going to be implemented and fixing real showstopper bugs that severely
affect the usability of these features ASAP.  For most people, while having a
less
than ideal toolchain is annoying, having a moving target is completely useless.
Furthermore, if D didn't bother with new features and was just a slightly better
C++/Java, the switching costs wouldn't be justified.

Another thing to take into account is that mistakes in the spec (and to some
extent the reference implementation is a de facto spec) are a lot more permanent
than bad toolchain implementaitons.  Creating a real top-of-the-line toolchain
is
something that can be done after the spec is finalized and the features
implemented without breaking anything.  This includes improving the linker,
fixing
bugs that don't fundamentally affect the usability of language features,
improving
performance, etc.  It is also something that can be (and is being) done by the
community, i.e. people other than Walter.

Jarrett Billingsley <jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> writes:

On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 11:35 PM, Walter
Bright<newshound1 digitalmars.com> wrote:
 Robert Fraser wrote:
 I'm considering doing so since Optlink won't work with the debug build of
 one of my libraries (it's 22MB),


 Is this reported in bugzilla?


http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=424

He's not the only one.  Ask me, Tom S., eldar..

Jarrett Billingsley <jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> writes:

On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 1:27 AM, Walter
Bright<newshound1 digitalmars.com> wrote:
 Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
 On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 11:35 PM, Walter
 Bright<newshound1 digitalmars.com> wrote:
 Robert Fraser wrote:
 I'm considering doing so since Optlink won't work with the debug build
 of
 one of my libraries (it's 22MB),


 Is this reported in bugzilla?


 http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3D424

 He's not the only one. =A0Ask me, Tom S., eldar..


 1. Robert doesn't say if that is the issue or not.


Fair enough, though I'm just speaking from experience here.  Large
objects =3D lots of fixups =3D dead OPTLINK.

 2. The last comment in the bug report is a request for a reproducible tes=


 case. I need one.


I've just posted one.