I finally compiled myself gdc, a d frontend for gcc. Surprisingly it was very simple.
I basically had to unpack the gcc tarball, cd into gcc-4.0.3/gcc/ and unpack the gdc tarball which created a d sub directory. Then cd .. and run ./gcc/d/setup-gcc.sh which basically patched the gcc sources which added the d language.
Then I had to make a build directory, I decided to create /opt/gdc and then cd /opt/gdc. And then simply run (from that directory) /path/gcc-4.0.3/configure –prefix=/opt/gdc –enabled-languages=d,c,c++ followed by make and make install. Easy!
I’m planning to experiment with the d programming language and I will probably do all my concept-projects using this programming language. I’m for example planning to implement a reference implementation of deconf-spec in d. But I guess it depends on the results of the experiments I’m going to do.
Great!
I have been fooling around with D for a couple of months now. Actually I tried it two years ago, but I was a bit scared that it wouldn’t last, so I dropped it. But as it seems it’s getting better all the time, I just wanted to try it again. And I like it very much, so far.
It was absolutely wonderful to see your post on planet gnome, as I thought that no-one in the gnome community would be bothered with this kind of… well… underground programming language, as everybody’s really excited about python and mono, and still insist on doing everything with C.
I really think it could be possible for the free software movement to start using a new language that is not coming from the Sun or Msoft.
There are still some quirks with D, but I hope you like it, and start using it. And recommend it to more people…
Hey satelliittipupu,
I agree that we should at least consider this language. One problem is that it isn’t included with the standard distribution of gcc. I understood that’s mainly because GNU requires a full copyright transfer to the GNU organization.
I’m planning to build packages for GDC sooner or later. Perhaps that might ease adoption.
I don’t think environments like Python, Java and Mono are the best development software for all software problems. I’m guessing nor do professional Python, Mono and Java developers do. Nor I think the people who build those development environments do. Nor would D be the best tool for all jobs.
But a successful D would certainly be a very useful programming language for me personally. I’m guessing for a lot other people too.
So I’m really wondering what I can do to improve the situation. How can I help the idea behind the D programming language? I’m very likely going to put at least some of my time in the language itself. But I guess it would be a good idea, for me, to start using the language first.
I totally agree that D isn’t a replacement for anything, it’s just an addition to the tools we have available. I myself use Python and Java when I need them for a specific task or program.
From the gnome point of view there are some interesting efforts going on with the GTK+ D-bindings. They used to be called DUI, and at the moment they are called Duit, but there’s propably going to be yet another name change to GtkD or DGtk. (I’d prefer GtkD myself.) The source is available from http://www.dsource.org/projects/dui
and there’s some discussion going on in http://www.dsource.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=45&sid=292702e7a5014e4c9545e8cc3017080d
(I couldn’t get it working as I’m on OS X, but it might work on Linux. And it seems it’s very much a one man project, and might need some effort. It’s in alpha stage.)
But well. Using the language is a good idea to do first. I’ll have to do that myself, too.