• Chris Piker (18/18) Mar 19 2021 I am curious to know what barriers prevent dub from supporting C
• Eugen Wissner (10/28) Mar 19 2021 I think it just isn't dub's responsibility to build C code and it adds a
• Chris Piker (12/17) Mar 19 2021 Ah, that makes it more clear. This is a very handy combo by the
• Bastiaan Veelo (6/8) Mar 20 2021 The best option currently is probably to call any existing build
• Imperatorn (2/10) Mar 20 2021 This is probably what I would do if I had to
• James Blachly (5/19) Mar 20 2021 Yes, this is what we do for our D library that needs some C source
• Chris Piker (17/25) Mar 22 2021 Hey thanks for the advice. I agree it's the current best option.
• rikki cattermole (5/6) Mar 22 2021 Entirely philosophical.

Chris Piker <chris hoopjump.com> writes:

I am curious to know what barriers prevent dub from supporting C 
source code compilation.

I have seen many wrapper projects mentioned here, but I think all 
of these leave handling of external fortran/C/C++ source packages 
to other systems.  This makes sense for large projects such as 
Qt.  However, for new D programmers, original C sources may 
slowly disappear over time while continuing to supply key 
functionality for quite a while and I presume that getting new 
programmers is a central goal of the community.

Since dub already works with compilers other than dmd, how much 
work would it take to make it work with other llvm/gcc supported 
languages such as fortran/c/c++ ?

Are there fundamental non-technical reasons that support for 
selected external languages in dub is a bad idea?

Maybe these are naive questions.

I found dub to be especially handy in the wild-west environment 
of Windows programming and would like to rely on it a bit more.

Kind Regards,

"Eugen Wissner" <belka caraus.de> writes:

I think it just isn't dub's responsibility to build C code and it adds a
lot of complexity that is difficult to maintain. dub is more of a package
manager with some build system capabilities than a build system. If you look
at how many C/C++ build systems we have, autotools, cmake, meson, you
can see that it isn't a trivial task to get it right. And dub has even
problems with its main task, package management, so there where some
attempts to rewrite it from scratch.

In my opinion it would be better to add D support to existing build
systems. Meson supported D, there were cmake intergration for D.

On Sat Mar 20, 2021 at 12:11 AM CET, Chris Piker via Digitalmars-d wrote:
 I am curious to know what barriers prevent dub from supporting C
 source code compilation.

 I have seen many wrapper projects mentioned here, but I think all
 of these leave handling of external fortran/C/C++ source packages
 to other systems. This makes sense for large projects such as
 Qt. However, for new D programmers, original C sources may
 slowly disappear over time while continuing to supply key
 functionality for quite a while and I presume that getting new
 programmers is a central goal of the community.

 Since dub already works with compilers other than dmd, how much
 work would it take to make it work with other llvm/gcc supported
 languages such as fortran/c/c++ ?

 Are there fundamental non-technical reasons that support for
 selected external languages in dub is a bad idea?

 Maybe these are naive questions.

 I found dub to be especially handy in the wild-west environment
 of Windows programming and would like to rely on it a bit more.

 Kind Regards,

Chris Piker <chris hoopjump.com> writes:

On Friday, 19 March 2021 at 23:30:10 UTC, Eugen Wissner wrote:

 ... dub is more of a package
 manager with some build system capabilities than a build system.

Ah, that makes it more clear.  This is a very handy combo by the 
way, especially on Windows where package managers and build tools 
can't implicitly communicate with each other via a standard 
filesystem layout.

 In my opinion it would be better to add D support to existing 
 build systems. Meson supported D, there were cmake intergration 
 for D.

I've been working with meson today.  Meson has the opposite 
problem, it's a build system that can kinda sorta do some package 
wrangling.  Meson and cmake look like they only address half of 
the problem space.

I don't know what problems dub has that people considered 
re-writing it, but it sure is a handy starter tool, much gentler 
learning curve then maven.

Bastiaan Veelo <Bastiaan Veelo.net> writes:

On Friday, 19 March 2021 at 23:11:51 UTC, Chris Piker wrote:
 I am curious to know what barriers prevent dub from supporting 
 C source code compilation.

The best option currently is probably to call any existing build 
tool in dub’s preBuildCommands to compile files in foreign 
languages as part of the dub build process.

Do you see any issues using this approach?

— Bastiaan.

Imperatorn <johan_forsberg_86 hotmail.com> writes:

On Saturday, 20 March 2021 at 14:19:25 UTC, Bastiaan Veelo wrote:
 On Friday, 19 March 2021 at 23:11:51 UTC, Chris Piker wrote:
 I am curious to know what barriers prevent dub from supporting 
 C source code compilation.

 The best option currently is probably to call any existing 
 build tool in dub’s preBuildCommands to compile files in 
 foreign languages as part of the dub build process.

 Do you see any issues using this approach?

 — Bastiaan.

This is probably what I would do if I had to

James Blachly <james.blachly gmail.com> writes:

On 3/20/21 10:28 AM, Imperatorn wrote:
 On Saturday, 20 March 2021 at 14:19:25 UTC, Bastiaan Veelo wrote:
 On Friday, 19 March 2021 at 23:11:51 UTC, Chris Piker wrote:
 I am curious to know what barriers prevent dub from supporting C 
 source code compilation.

 The best option currently is probably to call any existing build tool 
 in dub’s preBuildCommands to compile files in foreign languages as 
 part of the dub build process.

 Do you see any issues using this approach?

 — Bastiaan.

 
 This is probably what I would do if I had to

Yes, this is what we do for our D library that needs some C source 
linked in as .o file. I posted a followup to Chris' message in the learn 
forum as well.

https://github.com/blachlylab/intervaltree/blob/master/dub.json

Chris Piker <chris hoopjump.com> writes:

On Saturday, 20 March 2021 at 14:19:25 UTC, Bastiaan Veelo wrote:
 On Friday, 19 March 2021 at 23:11:51 UTC, Chris Piker wrote:
 I am curious to know what barriers prevent dub from supporting 
 C source code compilation.

 The best option currently is probably to call any existing 
 build tool in dub’s preBuildCommands to compile files in 
 foreign languages as part of the dub build process.

 Do you see any issues using this approach?

 — Bastiaan.

Hey thanks for the advice.  I agree it's the current best option. 
I was afraid that putting C sources into dub packages would 
violate community norms but that seems to be acceptable, at least 
occasionally.

Getting back to the broader topic, here's another way to state 
the original question:

   Suppose someone had a dub fork that supported C/C++ code well.
   Would a pull request to merge that support be rejected out of 
hand?

What I'm trying to find out is if the problem of closely related 
language support is technical, or for lack of a better word, 
philosophical.  What I'm hearing is that dub doesn't support 
C/C++ code for two reasons:

  1. It's a bad idea. (main reason)
  2. There's no resources for such an effort. (secondary concern)

Does that sound correct?

rikki cattermole <rikki cattermole.co.nz> writes:

On 23/03/2021 5:22 PM, Chris Piker wrote:
 is technical, or for lack of a better word, philosophical.

Entirely philosophical.

It would be nice to get something like premake to support dub packages 
and maybe have it hook back into dub so they can feed into each other 
(although premake side may have to be manual).