What conclusion should we draw about Aro based on what you’re saying?
D would deserve attention too, in a separate post, or here if it was explained how it relates to Aro.
The last sentence, or, indeed, the whole comment, can be read like "We did this for D, and it works well. [go for it]".
I don't think D is casting any shadow on Zig. Both languages play in the same field, D is older but I feel like we hear about Zig way more these days.
His comment is likely to interest people interested in Zig or PLs in general.
The comment as is might lack some finesse but I don't think it deserves this level of aggressiveness.
For me, I appreciate the perspective and opinions of someone else in the industry with proven results. D is a major language, you can't deny that.
Maybe this post he should have went into a little more detail but I do not think he posted this with ill intent.
If anything I'm sure he would love to continue a dialog about the design decisions that led him to implement the same feature - and maybe this was his way of starting the conversation.
Given that he is a 15 year member of our community, and has earned 70k karma, we should give him the benefit of the doubt.
If there's interest, I can give more detail.
no, it is not. in the fine tradition of hn, let me reply by saying, "that's like, just your opinion, man". which is not worth more than any other people's opinion on this site. maybe worth less.
e.g.:
>D would deserve attention too if ...
so now you are telling everyone what deserves attention?
then what have you done to deserve attention yourself (to your comments, that is)?
walter has done plenty. he created the D language, and still maintains it, along with others, like, you know, Andrei, for one. Google who that is.
Google about Walter to know what other stuff he has done before, like you know, the Zortech C++ compiler.
Let me say that I think the same about this comment of yours upthread:
>>D would deserve attention too, in a separate post, or here if it was explained how it relates to Aro.
(still editing)
In case you cannot or don't want to google for some reason, here are the Wikipedia articles about Walter and Andrei, and important related topics (all on Wikipedia, which implies noteability) that I suggested you look up, above:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Bright
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zortech_C%2B%2B
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_(1977_video_game)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_(programming_language)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Alexandrescu
See here for one way to get it, i.e. someone else's comment on the topic:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41026310
If that doesn't help, start reading from the start of this subthread that starts with Walter Bright's comment about D, and pay attention throughout, otherwise don't waste your time commenting.
If even that doesn't help, nothing will; sorry, I don't have the time to explain things more than that, for a trivial matter like this.
Au contraire! You're contributed more to this sideshow than anybody: context I was fully aware of when I asked my rhetorical question.
Oh, and you probably know this in the abstract, but your patronizing tone really isn't doing your case any favors here.
>Au contraire! You're contributed more to this sideshow than anybody: context I was fully aware of when I asked my rhetorical question.
>Au contraire!
Merde! Mon Dieu! Gesundheit! (Hey, Duo, you buggy bro! that's DE, not FR) :)
I can talk fancy French too, with the help of my French mistress, aka Google Translate(ss) :) :
ton discours fantaisiste ne me dérange pas, mon garçon
original in English, by me:
your fancy talk does not faze me, boy
https://translate.google.com/?sl=en&tl=fr&text=your%20fancy%...
>sideshow
if it's a sideshow, why did you participate in it? you are a serious guy, right?
me, I am a dumbass, and just having fun.
>context I was fully aware of when I asked my rhetorical question.
I don't believe it. you are trying to CYA.
but anyway, rhetorical questioners should expect to get any kind of answers, including unexpected ones.
see ya. ciao.
wow, those last two words of mine, they kind of rhyme.
I should take up a career as a poet, since it's already a vocation, after I've spent some of my millions taking a vacation.
signed,
- funster.ai
in Westminster, bye bye.
# everything has to be AI nowadays, otherwise people don't pay attention. that's the usual convention. it's a source of dissension.
The post title is "Aro, Zig's new C compiler", not just about Aro or Zig. In fact, just by virtue of being about Aro, it is also about C compilers - as the title clearly says, whether you (pedantically) like it or not. And D is a language that is used as a better C too, apart from other things. In fact, lang C -> lang D, says something significant to this discussion, right?
>Could you draw a comparison for those who came here for Zig and not D?
Sigh.
More pedantic talk.
Shall we start drawing Venn diagrams to clarify things?
Is it not possible that there can be different groups of people, some of whom are interested in Zig, others in Zig and Aro, others in C compilers generally, and others in D with some of those groups overlapping? That's what Venn diagrams are meant to show.
Generally speaking, the more you stray from the most concrete topic at hand (in this case Aro and only Aro), the more it becomes appropriate to explain and elaborate on the relation between that and whatever you've decided to talk about instead. In my view, anyway.
how did you jump from C to all programming languages, in the context of that statement? I did not say anything of the kind.
I can't waste my time explaining things multiple times to different people who don't get it, when others have got it.
maybe check my answers to the other people in this subthread, if you are that interested, for what is such a trivially obvious matter.
good luck.
Simply by taking further steps in the same direction. The submission is about Aro, and therefore comments about Aro are on-topic. By your own stated logic, Aro is a C compiler, and therefore comments about other C compilers are also on-topic. One could then go on to say that C compilers in turn pertain to C, and C in turn is a programming language, therefore rendering all comments about programming on-topic under a submission about Aro.
Granted, the example is a bit of a hyperbole, and I doubt anyone would really jump that far. But I find your assertion that a submission about a program (in this instance Aro) renders comments about all other programs of the same kind (in this instance C compilers for other languages) on-topic to be much in the same vein.
> I can't waste my time explaining things multiple times to different people who don't get it, when others have got it.
> maybe check my answers to the other people in this subthread, if you are that interested, for what is such a trivially obvious matter.
I have, of course, read your other comments, but haven’t found anything that would help me understand or accept your argument (assuming that is what I'm supposed to ‘get’). I suppose it's not so ‘trivially obvious’ to me. Don't feel obliged to elaborate any further if you feel that's a waste of your time, though. Good luck!
Here is one, i will not go into others:
>>how did you jump from C to all programming languages, in the context of that statement? I did not say anything of the kind.
>Simply by taking further steps in the same direction.
but i did not ask you to take further steps in the same direction, so that you could twist my words.
i limited myself to C and closely related topics, like D, C++, Walter, and Andrei - related languages and people involved with them.
don't try to twist my words, as you appear to have done above.
yes, once i find people talking fake or not understanding, it is a waste of my time, so i will not engage further with you.
I took them to paint an example, so that my argument could be better understood. The example was clearly presented as my own; I have twisted no words of yours from what I can see, and I most certainly wasn't trying to.
> i limited myself to C and closely related topics […]
Yes, while the submission is about Aro, not C, hence the disagreement.
> […] so i will not engage further with you.
Thank you, I suppose.
What I need to work reliably from C++ are 1. instantiation of imported templates, ideally including CRTP, and 2. handling in D of exceptions thrown from C++, because if I use a C++ library that throws, I need to be able to handle the exception.
So far I’ve found languages that can import template classes and functions from C++ (usually by extending LLVM/Clang), but no languages that have good, reliable cross-platform C++ exception handling.
Last I tried, I found some compiler options and commands to do it, but they were badly explained, I tried for hours and it just didn't work at all, so I gave up.
I am currently adding AArch64 support to DMD's code generator. dmd doesn't run on my Raspberry Pi (yet!), so I use sshfs to access the Pi's filesystem from Ubuntu, compile programs on Ubuntu, transfer the .o file to the Pi, link it on the Pi, and run it on the Pi.
I'm sorry you're having trouble with this, so I recommend posting on the D forums, and people are there to help!
As far as I can tell, D's DMD can cross compile but not link. I probably missed that before (actually, I think I was trying with LDC, I found the page where they document the process while searching for it just now: https://wiki.dlang.org/Cross-compiling_with_LDC if you try those options, nothing works, at least from MacOS).
I just tried and this only works with the -c option (compile, but not link):
dmd -os=linux -c source/app.d
``` Error: linker exited with status 1 cc app.o -o app -m64 -Xlinker -no_compact_unwind -L/Users/me/dlang/dmd-2.109.1/osx/bin/../lib -Xlinker -Bstatic -lphobos2 -Xlinker -Bdynamic -lpthread -lm (dmd-2.109.1) ```
I am sure Walter knows how to compile on one machine, then go to another machine and do the linking or whatever is needed. I know nothing about those, but with Zig I need not know anything other than which flag to use to cross compile. It's a huge difference. D should do that, otherwise it's just not competitive for people like me (I am just an average joe programmer who knows how to write code but has very little interest in learning how linkers work).
Historically, you would or at least could get your compiler and linker from different vendors -- assembler, disassembler and other tools too. So it's normal/common for C compilers like gcc, clang, dmd to not be distributed like Zig is.
But I would dare say that the way Zig is doing it is a great model for others.
> go to another machine and do the linking
BTW - if you use something like debian/ubuntu for development, they have compilers+linkers+binutils for several different architectures available to make cross-building without Zig at least a little bit easier.
It would be awesome to have a post explaining how to do that :)
I've had a look and saw that Zig is still implementing the `ld` command, but there's already a `ld.ldd` command which might work if you know what magical options to use. I've tried to link my D object file but it can't find a whole lot of generated symbols, and a quick search online does not tell me where do I get those symbols from. That's always what happens when I try to do stuff with D that's not well documented.
I tried this (used the dmd -v option to get the linker command):
zig ld.lld -L/Users/me/dlang/dmd-2.109.1/osx/bin/../lib app.o
```
ld.lld: error: undefined symbol: _d_assert_msg >>> referenced by myd/source/app.d >>> app.o:(_D4core8internal5newaa__T6makeAATAyaTiZQoFNaNeHQoiZSQByQBwQBq7AAShell) >>> referenced by myd/source/app.d >>> app.o:(_D3std6format5write__T14formattedWriteTSQBm5stdio4File17LockingTextWriterTaTS3app__T9StringMapTiZQnZQDaFNfKQCqMxAaQBmZk) >>> referenced by myd/source/app.d >>> app.o:(_D3std6format5write__T14formattedWriteTSQBm5stdio4File17LockingTextWriterTaTS3app__T9StringMapTiZQnZQDaFNfKQCqMxAaQBmZk) >>> referenced 27 more times
ld.lld: error: undefined symbol: _aaLen >>> referenced by myd/source/app.d >>> app.o:(_D4core8internal5newaa__T6makeAATAyaTiZQoFNaNeHQoiZSQByQBwQBq7AAShell) >>> referenced by myd/source/app.d >>> app.o:(_D3std6format8internal5write__T15formatValueImplTSQBw5stdio4File17LockingTextWriterTHiHAyaiTaZQClFNfKQCaQuMKxSQEeQEd4spec__T10FormatSpecTaZQpZv) >>> referenced by myd/source/app.d >>> app.o:(_D3std6format8internal5write__T15formatValueImplTSQBw5stdio4File17LockingTextWriterTHAyaiTaZQCjFNfKQByQsMKxSQEcQEb4spec__T10FormatSpecTaZQpZv)
ld.lld: error: too many errors emitted, stopping now (use --error-limit=0 to see all errors)
```
Do you know how to get past that?
Zig is notable for putting a lot of work into hard-coding basic C libraries, though of course you still need a scattering of other C libraries for most real-world programs.
(for a sufficiently advanced language ecosystem, the language's own libraries should be easy enough)
- get a suitable cross compiler toolchain
- pick whether you want dynamic or static linking (most likely static when the target system does not come with /nix/store)
- compile all prerequisites for the library such as transitive dependencies
- compile the library with the cross compiler for the selected target arch
All in one command line call, that does not require you to 'apt-get install' any of the tools manually:
nix-build '<nixpkgs>' -A pkgsStatic.libpng --arg crossSystem '{ config = "armv7a-unknown-linux-gnueabihf"; }'