Hello aJ,
"Steven Schveighoffer" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
On Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:59:52 -0400, AJ <[email protected]> wrote:
Since D has no header files, how does one create "a library" that
another developer can use without exposing the implementation?
try dmd -H.
.di files are D header files, basically used for the reason you
specify.
OK, so header files can be generated. The thing is though, when I am
designing at the code level, I start with the declarations (such as
class data members and methods) and do the implementation (or one can
hand it off to someone else) afterwards.
As it happens, .di files are just .d files that by convention only contain
the interface. You can declare a class in a .d file and not give bodies for
its methods and you won't get errors till link time, just like in C.
That serves as the "blue
print" for further development and remains as first level of
documentation as well. Working with just "implementation files" seems
to be putting the cart before the horse. While eliminating something
unnecessary is something to strive for, I don't think header files are
unnecessary in the development process (i.e., I don't think that
relegating them to just the situation given with my OP is good,
exactly for the reasons of usefullness I gave).
I'm not sure what use you are seeing for them. As far as documentation goes,
In the cases where I don't care about the implementation, I'd rather see
some kind of extracted, generated documentation rather than a header file.
The only argument I see for a header/implementation split is if you need
to put part of a class in one file and part in another and I think that is
a very weak case.
