On 25/04/2015 7:31 p.m., Jens Bauer wrote:
On Saturday, 25 April 2015 at 07:08:26 UTC, Rikki Cattermole wrote:
I was referring to package.d files. And publically importing all below
modules/packages.
Normally, one would want to import only the most necessary parts.
Let's take an example: A microcontroller has USB, LCD controller,
Ethernet, U(s)ART, SPI, CAN, I2S, I2C and also supports SDRAM.
-But the program being developed only needs the LCD controller and the
USART, so the Ethernet should not be imported, because if it's seen by
the linker, the linker will include it in the final binary. Thus the
final binary will be huge, if all of those interfaces are imported.
NXP made some #ifdef in their header files and it was terrible working
with these. You couldn't build one library, which would work with all
your projects, because then you would have a big lump containing
everything, including all the stuff you wouldn't need.
If you have problems with too large a binaries, in D then it is a bug in
the compiler. Never used code, should not hit the linker.
Okay okay, it does happen. There is a trick with empty template bracket
which allows for this. But it is a work around.
I wonder if you can get e.g. interfaces and classes working.
I hope I will. ;)
I think classes are really a must. The only thing that I (currently) see
that could perhaps block this from working, would be missing support for
static constructors and a missing memory allocator.
The missing memory allocator would be entirely because I would have
disabled it; this might be necessary on very small devices (such as 1K
RAM devices or worse).
Devices that have 64K on-chip memory might be big enough for using new
and delete on a regular basis (this is just guesswork). If the
programmer is instantiating classes carefully, it should be possible to
avoid too many problems.
My current startup.d files do not support static constructors. static
destructors are obsolete, because a microcontroller never 'exits'. If
it's turned off, the constructed data gets deallocated automatically
when the power drops too low anyway. ;)
In other words: Normally main() never exits.
You could definitely allocate the memory during linking. After all e.g.
drivers will be singleton right?
