On 1/20/2012 2:12 AM, Robert Caravani wrote:
First of all thanks for this fast answer!
On 1/19/2012 12:48 PM, Roberto Caravani wrote:
I think this would be a real neat and very important feature, when it
comes to shared libraries. Is there any plan to implement something
like that in the future? Do I miss something?
The pimpl pros and cons are the same for C++ and D.
Well, yes they are currently. But as D has pure reference semantics for
classes, it would be easier to handle the case when the size of an object is
not known at compile time. It basically comes down to having operator new read
the size from the library and having derived classes members do some offset
calculation. (Member initialization would have to be done by a function) Is
there something missing?
Is there a flaw in my proposal? Isn't it worth the effort? What are the
problems?
In Java pimpl for ABI compatibility seems not to be neccessary, according to:
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/second_edition/html/binaryComp.doc.html
(It states that you can freely add and remove private fields)
but ok, Java is not a system programming language, they might cheat somehow.
Java can recompile things on the fly.
Such a feature seems really cool to me, especially for library developers,
because they have to care less that they are implementing a dynamic library.
And you can easily avoid the costs if you don't need it, no rewrite necessary,
just a recompilation of the program. (Not even the library, if you don't care
about the hidden static size member and the initialization methods)
Maybe I am completely wrong, but if so I want to know
This is not really a feature request, as there are far more important things
to do at the moment. This is more a: "Is it possible?" "Would you like to have
it, if someone else implemented it?"
What you're asking for is dynamic typing. You can achieve something equivalent
using opDispatch and std.variant.
