Yeah, but there are the GDC [1] and LDC [2] implementations, which AFAIK uses their respective (open source) backends, so that should really not be a problem IMO ...

[1] http://gdcgnu.sourceforge.net/ [2] https://github.com/ldc-developers/ldc

(In my tests, they are also mostly the fastest ones, especially LDC ... see for example my comparisons in http://saml.rilspace.org/moar-languagez-gc-content-in-python... ... D with LDC is among the top contenders, together with various optimized C versions ...)

That is not the correct link to GDC. It's an old and out of date version controlled by someone who hasn't been involved for years.

https://github.com/D-Programming-GDC/GDC

Over various points in the lifetime of D, GDC was dead, then LDC was dead, then GDC was alive again, then...

Looking at the commit history, GDC has been in steady development since about 4 years now after a pause and LDC is being steadily developed since its beginnings (with changing main authors). Both have very active maintainers these days.

Things might've changed now, but Steve is right. there used to be a sense of dread with other compiler directions. Last time I was in, GDC was about a year without any serious updates. DMD on the other hand didn't have support for 64bit, which was imperative for my usage at the time.

All this talk about D got me nostalgic about great group of people and a sense of accomplishment being made (with language and libraries) when I was using it. It makes me want to have another go, almost.