On Wednesday, 12 September 2018 at 08:09:46 UTC, Joakim wrote:
I don't think there's a "dedicated team" for any platform that
D runs on, so we don't have "first class support" for any
platform then.
But ARM (Android/iOS) has always been treated worse than a
stepchild by D devs. No interest whatsoever, leave it to the LDC
guys...
D is largely a volunteer effort: if that's not enough, maybe D
isn't right for you. This isn't Kotlin or Swift, where one of
the largest companies in the world puts full-time devs on the
language and gives everything away for free because it suits
their agenda.
In Apple's case, that means Swift doesn't really support
Android and definitely doesn't support Android/AArch64, because
putting full-time devs on getting Swift working well with
Android doesn't suit their agenda of pushing iOS:
Swift locks you in too much.
Kotlin is becoming more cross-platform now since google is more
cross-platform, but then you're depending on google continually
funding development on an OSS project, which they've backed out
of before:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/
I don't fault google for making those choices, as nobody has a
right to their OSS contributions, but it is something to
consider when using any platform, and even more so for an OSS
project: who is funding this and why? Will their model be
sustainable?
There are no easy answers here: if you want a free-priced, OSS
toolchain, you're going to be marching to the beat of someone's
drum.
We all understand that. But often you don't get to choose. If the
user wants an app for Android/iOS what you're gonna tell him or
her? "I'm not marching to the beat of Google's drum."?
Also, having no or no smooth support for something doesn't make
the D community "rebels".
As for ongoing maintenance, Android/ARM was done years ago and
hasn't taken much in the way of maintenance to keep most of the
stdlib/dmd tests passing, so I don't think that's much of an
issue.
Just to make sure it all works. The less work the better.
btw, it was a thread _you_ started that finally spurred me to
begin this Android port five years back, though I'd enquired
about and had been considering it earlier:
https://forum.dlang.org/thread/yhulkqvlwnxjklnog...@forum.dlang.org
Ha ha! I know and you picked up on it. Thank you very much, it's
much appreciated. But look at the date: November 2013 (!) and
we're still talking about it while others have overtaken D in
this respect. 5 years + the founding of the D Language
Foundation. Sometimes it's good to think outside the box a little
and see what's going on around you. It's not just fancy ranges
and allocators. The software has to actually run somewhere.
