On Monday, 17 February 2020 at 03:07:33 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
On Monday, 17 February 2020 at 02:55:56 UTC, Curious wrote:
Note the ending: "The same front-end code is used by DMD, GDC
and LDC."
But what the meaning of this sentence?
They literally share like 97% of the code.
Looking over Github: https://github.com/dlang/ I see DMD,
Phobos and so on, but no separated project called Front-End.
Compare dmd:
https://github.com/dlang/dmd/
to ldc:
https://github.com/ldc-developers/ldc/
dmd has a `src` folder. ldc has a `dmd` folder. inside those
you'll find most the content is identical - written in D btw.
gdc is a little different because it is based on an older
version of dmd when it was written in C++ before it was ported
to D. it will be moving to the D version probably later this
year too, but it had to be C++ at first for gcc inclusion. But
even so, it is still almost all the same code and even has some
patches from new D versions ported back to c++ for it.
But basically all three compilers are branches of the same
codebase with most the same patches applied going forward so
they share the vast, vast majority of frontend code.
Hmm I see now, so DMD compiler has both Front-End and Back-End,
the LDC in this case is getting only the Front-End part from DMD
project.
So since the Front-End written in D and the GDC is still the
older version (C++), then they need to replicate the new features
from D to C++. Well this seems a pain.
By the way since the Front-End is in D, so it's occurring
bootstrapping, interesting.
Thanks.
