On Thursday, 9 January 2014 at 18:07:16 UTC, Piotr Szturmaj wrote:
Hello,
I'm developing embedded system product on ARM9/Linux platform
and I wish I could use D and vibe.d for this task.
I have couple of questions in this matter:
Like Mike, I'm an interested user, who wants to see D on ARMv7,
not a core developer, but I'll take a shot at answering your
questions.
- What is the current status of ARM support?
Limited. The reference DMD compiler has no support for ARM,
while the LDC and GDC compilers are trying to utilize the ARM
backends of llvm and gcc to add ARM support, as Mike points out,
but they're not finished. Not sure where ARM9 specifically fits
into all this.
- Does GDC support cross-compiling to ARM?
I've never tried it, but they do claim some support.
- Is it possible to remote-debug D code on ARM? (I've used GDB
for C++ remote debugging on ARM11, I think this should also
work with GDC compiled code)
I've been thinking about looking into this myself, for my work on
Android/x86, but I have not done so.
- Does druntime support ARM plaforms?
Grepping through the code, druntime appears to use a fair amount
of x86 assembly, but I have not yet looked into how much of that
is optimization and therefore not strictly necessary to
reimplement on ARM.
- Does phobos support ARM plaforms?
Phobos appears to be largely arch-independent by comparison, but
still supports x86 best in the cases where it isn't.
- Does GC run reliably on ARM (or is it platform independent)?
I don't think anybody can know for sure, since nobody has tried
to make it work. The source appears to be fairly independent,
but other core features like threading or fibers appear not be.
- Can you estimate eventual cost of supporting D on ARM (think
of paid bounty).
Not sure.
