• Jason House <jason.james.house gmail.com> Jun 09 2009
• Daniel Keep <daniel.keep.lists gmail.com> Jun 09 2009
• Jason House <jason.james.house gmail.com> Jun 10 2009
• Jason House <jason.james.house gmail.com> Jun 10 2009
• Bill Baxter <wbaxter gmail.com> Jun 10 2009
• Kagamin <spam here.lot> Jun 10 2009
• Jason House <jason.james.house gmail.com> Jun 10 2009
• Kagamin <spam here.lot> Jun 10 2009
• Tim Matthews <tim.matthews7 gmail.com> Jun 11 2009

Jason House <jason.james.house gmail.com> writes:

Earlier today, I tried to use the D compiler for .NET from 
http://dnet.codeplex.com/

Beyond compilation of the compiler, I found zero instructions on what to do 
next.  How do I integrate the compiler into the .NET framework/visual 
studio?  I'd like to be able to add D files to existing solutions (with C# 
code).  If I can do that, I'll probably push for some small adoption of D at 
work.  (I'm hoping mixins and templates will inspire the initial use of D)

Any tips or documentation on how to get started would be appreciated.

Daniel Keep <daniel.keep.lists gmail.com> writes:

Jason House wrote:
 Earlier today, I tried to use the D compiler for .NET from 
 http://dnet.codeplex.com/
 
 Beyond compilation of the compiler, I found zero instructions on what to do 
 next.  How do I integrate the compiler into the .NET framework/visual 
 studio?  I'd like to be able to add D files to existing solutions (with C# 
 code).  If I can do that, I'll probably push for some small adoption of D at 
 work.  (I'm hoping mixins and templates will inspire the initial use of D)
 
 Any tips or documentation on how to get started would be appreciated.
 


"The back-end code is not of production quality, it is intended for
research and educational purposes. The D Programming Language is a
fairly complex language, and non-trivial features such as TLS and
closures make it an interesting case study for generating IL code."

Why do people never read the big red label saying "Warning: not ready
for use!"?

As for VS integration, so far as I know, there isn't any.  I'm also
fairly certain that you can't combine different languages in a single
project period.

Jason House <jason.james.house gmail.com> writes:

Daniel Keep Wrote:

 
 
 Jason House wrote:
 Earlier today, I tried to use the D compiler for .NET from 
 http://dnet.codeplex.com/
 
 Beyond compilation of the compiler, I found zero instructions on what to do 
 next.  How do I integrate the compiler into the .NET framework/visual 
 studio?  I'd like to be able to add D files to existing solutions (with C# 
 code).  If I can do that, I'll probably push for some small adoption of D at 
 work.  (I'm hoping mixins and templates will inspire the initial use of D)
 
 Any tips or documentation on how to get started would be appreciated.
 


 "The back-end code is not of production quality, it is intended for
 research and educational purposes. The D Programming Language is a
 fairly complex language, and non-trivial features such as TLS and
 closures make it an interesting case study for generating IL code."
 
 Why do people never read the big red label saying "Warning: not ready
 for use!"?



Given the productivity increase that I could get, it's worth a shot.


 
 As for VS integration, so far as I know, there isn't any.  I'm also
 fairly certain that you can't combine different languages in a single
 project period.


Solutions are collections of projects. Each project can be in a different
language. 

Jason House <jason.james.house gmail.com> writes:

Daniel Keep Wrote:
 
 "The back-end code is not of production quality, it is intended for
 research and educational purposes. The D Programming Language is a
 fairly complex language, and non-trivial features such as TLS and
 closures make it an interesting case study for generating IL code."


I played around a bit more and it looks like D standard libraries don't compile
and there's no access to any .NET libraries. There's a hack to give access to
objects in System such as System.Console. I was able to use that to make hello
world work. It's useless for my goals. There's no way I could use it at work :( 

Bill Baxter <wbaxter gmail.com> writes:

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 2:12 PM, Jason House<jason.james.house gmail.com> w=
rote:
 Daniel Keep Wrote:

 "The back-end code is not of production quality, it is intended for
 research and educational purposes. The D Programming Language is a
 fairly complex language, and non-trivial features such as TLS and
 closures make it an interesting case study for generating IL code."


 I played around a bit more and it looks like D standard libraries don't c=


access to objects in System such as System.Console. I was able to use that =
to make hello world work. It's useless for my goals. There's no way I could=
 use it at work :(

As I was reading about C++/CLI recently, it made me wonder whether
that might be a better model to follow to bring D to .NET.  C++/CLI is
a managed .NET langauge, but it also interfaces seamlessly with native
C++ code.   It introduces a bit of new syntax on top of C++ so that
the managed classes and native classes can coexist.   For instance
"ref class Foo {...}" declares a class that will be managed by the
.NET VM.  "class Foo { ... }" remains as it is in C++, a native code
class.

Clearly it would be cool if all existing D code could be made to just
run unaltered on top of .NET, but this may be too much to hope for
given that D was designed to down-to-the-metal, and .NET was not
designed to host such langauges.

--bb

Kagamin <spam here.lot> writes:

Jason House Wrote:

 Beyond compilation of the compiler, I found zero instructions on what to do 
 next.



 How do I integrate the compiler into the .NET framework/visual 
 studio?



 I'd like to be able to add D files to existing solutions (with C# 
 code).


BTW how do you plan to get support for D syntax highlighting and intellisense?

Jason House <jason.james.house gmail.com> writes:

Kagamin Wrote:

 Jason House Wrote: 
 I'd like to be able to add D files to existing solutions (with C# 
 code).


 BTW how do you plan to get support for D syntax highlighting and intellisense?


I don't. While really cool, such features are not essential. What I'm really
hoping to get out of this is proper generic programming and enhanced
compile-time validation. Manual copying of boiler plate code with small tweaks
is sickening.

Kagamin <spam here.lot> writes:

Jason House Wrote:

What I'm really hoping to get out of this is proper generic programming and
enhanced compile-time validation.
 

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

Jason House wrote:
 Earlier today, I tried to use the D compiler for .NET from 
 http://dnet.codeplex.com/
 
 Beyond compilation of the compiler, I found zero instructions on what to do 
 next.  How do I integrate the compiler into the .NET framework/visual 
 studio?  I'd like to be able to add D files to existing solutions (with C# 
 code).  If I can do that, I'll probably push for some small adoption of D at 
 work.  (I'm hoping mixins and templates will inspire the initial use of D)
 
 Any tips or documentation on how to get started would be appreciated.
 


It works from the command line like dmd but with ms vs tools like ilasm 
in your path too. Visual studio could probably make use of it but is 
there any D VS plugin projects that are not dead?

It uses D import files to call existing clr code but it only has a few 
things in the import files. It is possible to add stuff to the import 
files but the plan is to generate the imports automatically. It is 
pretty much very experimental at the moment and could do with the extra 
man power to get it going. Dmd front end in source control with proper 
documentation as you asked in D newsgroup would help a lot.

The import generator is mostly working but the generated imports are not 
parseable. http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3061