On Tuesday, 11 February 2014 at 19:43:00 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
What do you think?
I don't do embedded programming, so take my opinion with a grain of salt...
Rather than making this a compiler switch, I think it would be more beneficial to branch this off as a new project, essentially building a new compiler. Similarly, it would contain that subset of features which are practical for embedded programming and strip out the rest. Then likewise to VisualD, make it an "official" repository on GitHub.
The benefit of having a separate project dedicated to embedded programming is the ability to retain a standard library without convoluting the rest of the D ecosystem. A slim standard library could be developed, mimicking (or even branched from) Phobos, but optimized for embedded systems. As DMD is updated, the changes would be merged into "embedded D", but otherwise the two would be maintained independently of one another.
It wouldn't be too dissimilar to other projects like it. There are projects which add non-official extensions to other languages, such as adding a garbage collector to C/C++.
