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digitalmars.D.learn - D compiler for .NET

reply Jason House <jason.james.house gmail.com> writes:
Earlier today, I tried to use the D compiler for .NET from 
http://dnet.codeplex.com/

Beyond compilation of the compiler, I found zero instructions on what to do 
next.  How do I integrate the compiler into the .NET framework/visual 

code).  If I can do that, I'll probably push for some small adoption of D at 
work.  (I'm hoping mixins and templates will inspire the initial use of D)

Any tips or documentation on how to get started would be appreciated.
Jun 09 2009
next sibling parent reply Daniel Keep <daniel.keep.lists gmail.com> writes:
Jason House wrote:

 Earlier today, I tried to use the D compiler for .NET from 
 http://dnet.codeplex.com/
 
 Beyond compilation of the compiler, I found zero instructions on what to do 
 next.  How do I integrate the compiler into the .NET framework/visual 

 code).  If I can do that, I'll probably push for some small adoption of D at 
 work.  (I'm hoping mixins and templates will inspire the initial use of D)
 
 Any tips or documentation on how to get started would be appreciated.
 


"The back-end code is not of production quality, it is intended for
research and educational purposes. The D Programming Language is a
fairly complex language, and non-trivial features such as TLS and
closures make it an interesting case study for generating IL code."

Why do people never read the big red label saying "Warning: not ready
for use!"?

As for VS integration, so far as I know, there isn't any.  I'm also
fairly certain that you can't combine different languages in a single
project period.
Jun 09 2009
next sibling parent Jason House <jason.james.house gmail.com> writes:
Daniel Keep Wrote:


 
 
 Jason House wrote:

 Earlier today, I tried to use the D compiler for .NET from 
 http://dnet.codeplex.com/
 
 Beyond compilation of the compiler, I found zero instructions on what to do 
 next.  How do I integrate the compiler into the .NET framework/visual 

 code).  If I can do that, I'll probably push for some small adoption of D at 
 work.  (I'm hoping mixins and templates will inspire the initial use of D)
 
 Any tips or documentation on how to get started would be appreciated.
 


 
 "The back-end code is not of production quality, it is intended for
 research and educational purposes. The D Programming Language is a
 fairly complex language, and non-trivial features such as TLS and
 closures make it an interesting case study for generating IL code."
 
 Why do people never read the big red label saying "Warning: not ready
 for use!"?



Given the productivity increase that I could get, it's worth a shot.



 
 As for VS integration, so far as I know, there isn't any.  I'm also
 fairly certain that you can't combine different languages in a single
 project period.


Solutions are collections of projects. Each project can be in a different
language.
Jun 10 2009
prev sibling parent reply Jason House <jason.james.house gmail.com> writes:
Daniel Keep Wrote:
 

 "The back-end code is not of production quality, it is intended for
 research and educational purposes. The D Programming Language is a
 fairly complex language, and non-trivial features such as TLS and
 closures make it an interesting case study for generating IL code."


I played around a bit more and it looks like D standard libraries don't compile
and there's no access to any .NET libraries. There's a hack to give access to
objects in System such as System.Console. I was able to use that to make hello
world work. It's useless for my goals. There's no way I could use it at work :(
Jun 10 2009
parent Bill Baxter <wbaxter gmail.com> writes:
On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 2:12 PM, Jason House<jason.james.house gmail.com> w=
rote:

 Daniel Keep Wrote:


 "The back-end code is not of production quality, it is intended for
 research and educational purposes. The D Programming Language is a
 fairly complex language, and non-trivial features such as TLS and
 closures make it an interesting case study for generating IL code."


 I played around a bit more and it looks like D standard libraries don't c=


ompile and there's no access to any .NET libraries. There's a hack to give =
access to objects in System such as System.Console. I was able to use that =
to make hello world work. It's useless for my goals. There's no way I could=
 use it at work :(

As I was reading about C++/CLI recently, it made me wonder whether
that might be a better model to follow to bring D to .NET.  C++/CLI is
a managed .NET langauge, but it also interfaces seamlessly with native
C++ code.   It introduces a bit of new syntax on top of C++ so that
the managed classes and native classes can coexist.   For instance
"ref class Foo {...}" declares a class that will be managed by the
.NET VM.  "class Foo { ... }" remains as it is in C++, a native code
class.

Clearly it would be cool if all existing D code could be made to just
run unaltered on top of .NET, but this may be too much to hope for
given that D was designed to down-to-the-metal, and .NET was not
designed to host such langauges.

--bb
Jun 10 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Kagamin <spam here.lot> writes:
Jason House Wrote:


 Beyond compilation of the compiler, I found zero instructions on what to do 
 next.


I believe it's a traditional CUI compiler. Compile the compiler, open command
prompt and run the compiler with source files. I think, it will say if
something is wrong.


 How do I integrate the compiler into the .NET framework/visual 
 studio?


I think, the same way, as you would integrate any other .net language. See
wikipedia for a list of them.



 code).


I don't think this feature is available, the author was focused on making CUI
compiler only. If VS allows integration of 3rd party compilers, you can use
that.
BTW how do you plan to get support for D syntax highlighting and intellisense?
Jun 10 2009
parent reply Jason House <jason.james.house gmail.com> writes:
Kagamin Wrote:


 Jason House Wrote: 


 code).


 I don't think this feature is available, the author was focused on making CUI
compiler only. If VS allows integration of 3rd party compilers, you can use
that.
 BTW how do you plan to get support for D syntax highlighting and intellisense?


I don't. While really cool, such features are not essential. What I'm really
hoping to get out of this is proper generic programming and enhanced
compile-time validation. Manual copying of boiler plate code with small tweaks
is sickening.
Jun 10 2009
parent Kagamin <spam here.lot> writes:
Jason House Wrote:


What I'm really hoping to get out of this is proper generic programming and
enhanced compile-time validation.
 


I think these are done by frontend and frontend was kept intact. He didn't even
wanted to add .net-specific pragmas to the frontend.
Jun 10 2009
prev sibling parent Tim Matthews <tim.matthews7 gmail.com> writes:
Jason House wrote:

 Earlier today, I tried to use the D compiler for .NET from 
 http://dnet.codeplex.com/
 
 Beyond compilation of the compiler, I found zero instructions on what to do 
 next.  How do I integrate the compiler into the .NET framework/visual 

 code).  If I can do that, I'll probably push for some small adoption of D at 
 work.  (I'm hoping mixins and templates will inspire the initial use of D)
 
 Any tips or documentation on how to get started would be appreciated.
 


It works from the command line like dmd but with ms vs tools like ilasm 
in your path too. Visual studio could probably make use of it but is 
there any D VS plugin projects that are not dead?

It uses D import files to call existing clr code but it only has a few 
things in the import files. It is possible to add stuff to the import 
files but the plan is to generate the imports automatically. It is 
pretty much very experimental at the moment and could do with the extra 
man power to get it going. Dmd front end in source control with proper 
documentation as you asked in D newsgroup would help a lot.

The import generator is mostly working but the generated imports are not 
parseable. http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3061
Jun 11 2009