On Sun, Apr 08, 2012 at 10:56:43PM +0400, Dmitry Olshansky wrote: > On 08.04.2012 22:51, Walter Bright wrote: [...] > >The main difficulty is not being able to modify the linker. So you're > >pretty much limited to what the compiler is able to do before > >linking. D does allow the compiler to deal with all the modules at > >compile time, so this helps a lot. > > I'm thinking what if we kind of do it as an extension so that your > linker (e.g. optlink) knows about these checksums (or whatever you use > instead) while normal linker just works the way it always did. [...]
I agree. Either that, or have an external utility for doing it. I must say that IMO current linker technology is quite dumb, and no harm could come from experimenting with smarter linkers. Things like duplicate template instantiation elimination have been introduced due to the influence of C++; I don't see why D shouldn't introduce its own advancements to linkers too. :-) T -- Laissez-faire is a French term commonly interpreted by Conservatives to mean 'lazy fairy,' which is the belief that if governments are lazy enough, the Good Fairy will come down from heaven and do all their work for them.
