On 07.11.2011 19:59, Martin Nowak wrote:
On Mon, 07 Nov 2011 17:49:30 +0100, Don <nos...@nospam.com> wrote:
On 07.11.2011 14:13, Gor Gyolchanyan wrote:
After reading
http://prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?DMDSourceGuide
https://github.com/gor-f-gyolchanyan/dmd/blob/master/src/interpret.c
I had a thought:
Why not compile and run CTFE code in a separate executable, write it's
output into a file, read that file and include it's contents into the
object file being compiled?
This would cover 100% of D in CTFE, including external function calls
and classes;
String mixins would simply repeat the process of compiling and running
an extra temporary executable.
This would open up immense opportunities for such things as
library-based build systems and tons of unprecedented stuff, that I
can't imagine ATM.
First comment: classes and exceptions now work in dmd git. The
remaining limitations on CTFE are intentional.
With what you propose:
Cross compilation is a _big_ problem. It is not always true that the
source CPU is the same as the target CPU. The most trivial example,
which applies already for DMD 64bit, is size_t.sizeof. Conditional
compilation can magnify these differences. Different CPUs don't just
need different backend code generation; they may be quite different in
the semantic pass. I'm not sure that this is solvable.
version(ARM)
{
immutable X = armSpecificCode(); // you want to run this on an X86???
}
I've always thought that it would be worthwhile to experiment with
LLVM's JIT engine here.
But as has been said quite some care will be necessary for cross
compilation.
Allowing arbitrary non-pure functions would cause lots troubles.
Yeah, I think JIT for CTFE would be *very* interesting. But mainly for
reasons of speed rather than functionality.
