On Saturday, 11 March 2023 at 12:04:25 UTC, bomat wrote:
Hello! First of all, let's start by making clear of what `@nogc` means. It it an attribute that is used one function signatures and it annotates that the garbage collector will not be used inside this function. However, in the scenario that we have `func1` that is annotated with `@nogc` and `func2` that is called by `func1`, I don't know if `func2` needs to be annotated with `@nogc` as well. This is not been said inside the SPEC (or at least, I didn't found it with the quick search I did) so someone could confirm or deny this if they know.
It works fairly well so far, just one problem: Dear ImGui is obviously `@nogc`, and I noticed that it doesn't mix with standard library functions.
Is it what people say "100% `@nogc`" which means that it doesn't use the garbage collector or does it use [betterC](https://dlang.org/spec/betterc.html)?
So my question is: Is Phobos essentially incompatible to `@nogc`?
Look [here](https://dlang.org/spec/function.html#nogc-functions) about the features that cannot be used with `@nogc`. Keep in mind that using `@nogc` in your project, will still have it link with Phobos and D's runtime library. `BetterC` is what disables the garbage collector completely (so no need for `@nogc`) but also doesn't make your binary/library link with D's runtime and Phobos. But if you don't use this mode, you will be able to link with the standard library and use the functions that do not use the garbage collector.
Or is there a trick for mixing GC code with non-GC code that I don't know?
For what I know, you can combine both methods by using the GC and also mannually allocating memory with libc's "malloc" (or of course your own allocator) but you'll probably have to look into some documentation on how to combine them without any sneaky bugs. However, you will probably not have to do anything "special" to make it work. As I never did it, maybe someone else could help on that one.
I'm assuming the second, for if the first was true I'd say that D would be pretty much useless when combined with non-D libs...
Even if the first was the case (which again, only things that need the GC will not be able to be used), D is far from been "useless". You can use `betterC` and use C's libraries. Personally, that's what I'm doing anyway. Even if there was no garbage collector and a runtime, I still don't like Phobos and the built-in structures of D. It is still far far better than pretty much any other (compiled) language out there in case of usability so it's not useless at all even if you cannot use the standard library!
