On Wednesday, 10 December 2014 at 10:48:12 UTC, Walter Bright
wrote:
On 12/10/2014 2:24 AM, Paulo Pinto wrote:
This cannot be the solution if D aspires to be used in
contexts where binary
libraries are used.
C++ is excused to have template code in headers given the
primitive tooling, but
languages like Ada and Modula-3 support proper information
hiding for generic code.
There's no way you can hide the implementation of a function
from the user if it is available to the compiler.
Quite a few people thought C++ "exported templates" would make
this work, but there is no known way to implement it and keep
it hidden from the user, not even if it is encrypted since the
compiler must decrypt it.
My remark had nothing to do with IP.
I prefer the model used by the referred languages, where binary
libraries and metadata is used, instead of the C toolchain model.
For example, just shipping the .TPU/.DCU libraries in the Object
Pascal world.
--
Paulo
